Digital Media

He calls himself Agent Zero. His shirt number is a big, fat zero. And this accurately reflects the number of tweets Gilbert Arenas has posted to his Twitter account.

It's not that Arenas, the Washington Wizards point guard, isn't confident of his literary skills. Oh, no. Just look at his finely sculpted blog.

However, according to The Washington Post, Arenas has no interest in being a small time Twitter player. He wants 1 million followers before he will start to offer tweets from his copious and wondrous life and imagination.

Just last week Arenas told the Associated Press that he's chosen to go for 1 million because "it's so far-fetched."

And when some cruel know-it-all tried to point out that the way folks normally get followers is, well, by tweeting, Arenas replied with the sagacity of Wittgenstein: "I'm trying to do the opposite."

So that you can get some sense of Arenas' twittering possibilities, I have embedded a small piece of film featuring the Arenas bobblehead, quite a character in its own right.

However, I know you'll be wondering just how far away Arenas is from achieving immortal far-fetchendess. Well, he's pretty close to catching Shaquille O'Neal, who enjoys just over 2.5 million followers.

Yes, Arenas has already amassed, at the time of typing this, 5,717 followers. Perhaps the 4-9 Wizards will need to win a few more games before his Twitter page is swamped by mass anticipation of Arenas' first tweet.

The unveiling of the iPhone, the debut of Twitter, and the growth of Craigslist are just three of decade's most influential Internet moments, as judged by the Webby Awards.

The folks behind the Webby Awards, presented each year for excellence on the Internet, dove into the top 10 craze this week, laying out their picks for the Internet developments of the past 10 years that have had the greatest reverberations. (And no, they're not a year ahead of schedule, despite the tendency of list makers to rally in years that end in '10. The decade technically runs from 2000 to 2009, with 2010 being the start of the next decade.)

The Webby Awards rundown of the decade in chronological order:

• Craigslist moving outside San Francisco in 2000 to revamp the whole notion of classified ads, striking fear in the hearts of newspapers everywhere.
• The launch of Google AdWords in 2000, opening up a new world of advertising for businesses both large and small.
• The start of Wikipedia in 2001 showing off the Internet's ability to let online strangers collaborate, leading to more than 14 million articles in 271 different languages.
• The takedown of Napster in 2001, triggering a revolution in the way we now grab our music and videos.
• Google's IPO in 2004, creating a massive, dominant, and far-reaching force on the Internet.
• The online video revolution in 2006 triggered by beefy bandwidth, cheap camcorders, and YouTube, flooding cyberspace with an array of professional and not-so-professional videos.
• The expansion of Facebook and the debut of Twitter in 2006, creating a fresh way for us to interact and communicate with friends and family.
• The launch of the iPhone in 2007, helping us hop onto the Internet anywhere, anytime through a cell phone.
• The U.S. presidential campaign in 2008 tapping into the Internet with videos like "Obama Girl," social networking use among voters, and online fundraising.
• The Iranian election protesters in 2009 using Twitter to spread their word, a movement that prompted the U.S. State Department to ask Twitter to keep the site up and running.

That's a pretty good list, but of course it immediately started us thinking about the influential Internet-related moments and developments from 2000 to 2009 that got short shrift or that got left off entirely.

Our list, in no particular order:

• The debut and growth of Firefox: The first browser to challenge the IE monopoly, Firefox now holds a 25 percent market share, paving the way for other players like Google Chrome.
• The arrival of blogging: Started as simple online diaries, blogs have grown to become a valid and valued source of news, opinion, and information. As a corollary, there's the rise of RSS, which lets the latest information come to us instead of our having to go out and find it.
• The surge in broadband: The availability of DSL, cable, satellite, and now Fios put a nail in the coffin for dial-up access, letting us download files in seconds, watch each other on webcams, and stream high-res videos.
• The allure of torrents: Whether used for legal or illegal file sharing, technologies like BitTorrent let us share and download all types of content across the Web from movies and TV shows to software. And speaking of movies and TV--the popularity of sites like Hulu and Netflix demonstrated that you no longer need a costly cable TV subscription to indulge your viewing inclinations.
• The reinvention of the telephone. On the one hand, there were VoIP services such as Skype, which saved us from expensive long-distance bills. On the other was 3G technology and mobile broadband, which let us jump into cyberspace from our phones, Netbooks, and a host of other portable gadgets.
• The rise of home workers: Thanks to the Internet, you can now run a full-fledged business or work for your employer without having to leave the house. There's also online education--with many accredited schools now online, today you can attend college or graduate school and get a full degree from your own computer.
• The ascent of Salesforce and cloud computing: With the success of cloud-computing providers like Salesforce, companies can now run much of their business online without the hassle of maintaining their own internal resources.
• The looming menace of cyberwarfare: On the downside, the Internet showed signs of becoming a new virtual battleground between countries, as in the purported cyberattacks against Estonia and Georgia.
• The lessons of the dot-com crash: The decade was barely under way when that bubble burst hard; wildly inflated stocks were tanking and Wall Street was reeling, frenetically hyped Web companies were imploding, and our retirement plans took a beating. That seem so long ago now, what with the current miserable state of the economy, post-housing bubble crash.

Do you agree or disagree with those picks? Sound off in the comments section below.

The Swedish town of Malmo is a wonderful place.

Some feel it is wonderful because it is the spiritual home of a band that was once cool, the Cardigans.

But now all committed social networkers will think Malmo is wonderful because of its IKEA. You see, the Swedish purveyor of fast-food furniture decided to open a new store in Malmo and didn't really have a lot of money to let people know about it.

So it engaged a rather outre advertising agency called Forsman and Bodenfors to create a rather special launch campaign.

The agency created a Facebook profile for the store manager, Gordon Gustavsson. Over a two-week period, it uploaded images from of IKEA showrooms to his Facebook photo album.

Then it put out word that the first person to tag their name to a product in the pictures, won it.

Facebook being what it is, word got out and needy, enthusiastic Swedes begged for more pictures so that they could tag themselves to a new sofa, a new bed, or a new vase into which they could stick their plastic flowers or their dead grandparents' ashes.

Before Facebook could take credit for its own wonderful ingenuity in creating the world's most needed Web site, thousands of Swedes were spreading pictures of IKEA showrooms all around the personal galaxy known as their profile pages.

Please look at the video I have embedded, as this idea is, as the best always are, simple and inspired. Which, some would say, also perfectly describes the clever, affordable, if sometimes maddening-to-put-together little things made by IKEA.

Insurance companies want us to be healthy. Really, they do. They have our interests at heart, and they defend those interests with an unusual zeal. This is why I am wondering which details might be missing from the tale of Natalie Blanchard.

According to the Associated Press, Blanchard, a 29-year-old IBM employee from Bromont, Quebec, was suffering from depression and took time away from work, relying on sick-leave benefits from her insurer, Manulife Financial.

The monthly payments were suddenly halted. When she called Manulife to ask why, she says she was told that it had espied photos on her Facebook page that showed her cheerful. Ergo, the argument allegedly went, she was able to work. Which led to the second ergo: no more payments.

The pictures, about which I am sure you are already wondering, were of her at a show featuring those tensing torsos, the Chippendales, as well as at a birthday party and on a beach holiday.

Depression is a nasty business. Cures are not exactly logical. And Blanchard says she went on three trips, each of a four-day duration, after consulting with her psychiatrist.

Manulife, while confirming (footage from Sky News embedded here) that it does use social-networking sites to, well, check up on its customers, also said, "We would not deny or terminate a valid claim solely based on information published on Web sites such as Facebook."

Perhaps you, too, have some questions. What sort of a life is it when you spend your days trawling social-networking sites to sniff around your customers' personal existence? How is it that Manulife observed Blanchard's photos? Did she leave her Facebook page entirely open, or could it be that she had her insurance agent as one of her Facebook friends? Was she, indeed, already under suspicion before the Facebook trawling began?

December 8, this case will be heard in the Quebec Superior Court. Surely, we will learn a little more about Natalie Blanchard and a little more about Manulife. Perhaps Facebook could provide a live feed from the proceedings?

Google wants to know more about how TiVo owners are exposed to commercials.

(Credit: TiVo)

Google and TiVo know you accidentally watch a few ads while fast-forwarding through the commercial breaks of your recorded programs, and they'd like a little more data to back that up.

Google plans to add TiVo "television viewing data" to its existing Google TV Ads program, the two companies said in a press release Tuesday. Google TV Ads is the company's attempt to re-create its AdWords and AdSense model on the small screen through a partnership with Dish Network, and it wants to use TiVo data to help its advertising clients measure how and when their ads are viewed.

DVRs like TiVo are not the favorite tech product of the television advertising business, as they allow viewers to watch shows whenever they like and skip the commercials. But most DVR owners (except for a few masters of the remote control) catch glimpses of ads as they whiz by, or overshoot the end of the commercial period and hit the 30-second rewind button, exposing them to the last ad shown before the program resumes.

That kind of viewing shouldn't count as a full ad impression, since the advertiser knows the viewer didn't watch the full ad, but Google seems to feel that it can't be completely ignored, either. It plans to use "anonymous second-by-second DVR viewing data" to track how viewers see ads placed through Google TV Ads. It also gives Google more access to viewer behavior on sources outside of Dish Network, including cable, satellite, and over-the-air viewers.

That could presumably make Google TV Ads more attractive to potential advertisers, since Google will be able to assemble a wealth of data on the viewing habits of DVR owners. Google also has a deal with Nielsen for viewing data, although some feel the new TiVo partnership will put a lot of strain on that relationship.

In a somewhat related move, TiVo has also partnered with MillerCoors to expose football fans to Coors Light ads when they are fast-forwarding through recorded NFL games.

If you stepped in late, it sounds awfully dull.

An announcement Tuesday tells us all that "certain assets" of a "white-label" online video service called Joost have been acquired by Adconion Media, which calls itself "the largest independent global audience and content network." The acquisition "will be able to provide advertisers, content owners, and Web site publishers with an end-to-end global video platform and cross-channel video and display ad-serving solution," according to a statement from Adconion CEO Tyler Moebius. Financial terms were not disclosed. Yawn.

But really, it's an exceptionally anticlimactic ending for Joost, a company so secretive and hyped that it was once known, James Bond-like, as "The Venice Project," and which was supposed to kill YouTube and that dastardly Cold War villain known as your cable company. It was a scrappy start-up with roots in lawlessness--founders Janus Friis and Niklas Zennstrom had built onetime file-sharing hub Kazaa--but major street cred, too, as they'd also founded Skype and sold it to eBay. There were impressive backers, too, including CBS (which owns CNET).

What went wrong?

Well, there was a big issue with Joost's downloadable peer-to-peer app. By the time it was released, Web-based video was advanced enough so that a required download was a barrier to entry, not a technical leg up. Some of the big-name content partners seemed to be putting in a halfhearted effort with Joost, offering up reruns and esoteric programs instead of the new programming that people actually wanted to watch.

But perhaps what really doomed Joost was something that was itself supposed to be a flop: When NBC Universal and News Corp. announced their plans to create an online video hub that would rival YouTube and address the rampant issue of piracy, it was referred to disparagingly as "Clown Co." We all know how that one turned out. The finished product, Hulu, was extremely well-received and continues to expand its video library.

There was, briefly, a time when it looked like there was a slight chance that things might turn up for Joost. It did, after all, beat most of its competitors to the release of an iPhone app, and a focus on niche content like Japanese anime seemed like a viable business choice as Hulu increasingly placed an emphasis on the mainstreamiest of the mainstream. Unfortunately, that didn't work either.

There was "a major retrenchment" as Joost reined in its lofty plans. Then it switched business models altogether to the far less glamorous "white-label video solutions" modus operandi.

And then the management debacles became evident. CEO Mike Volpi resigned and then was ousted by shareholders from his role as chairman. Oh, and then the company sued him. Nasty.

Sometimes hype plays out well. Sometimes it just doesn't, and Joost was one of those cases. In spite of the founders' prior successes, truckloads of venture capital dollars, and a few early and impressive content deals, it flopped. The end. Now, per Tuesday's release, it'll be "(adding) many dimensions to Adconion's existing video services and further will solidify its position in the online video and content syndication market."

That's a pretty nice way to put it.

eBay is playing virtual Santa this holiday season with a free "Deals" app for the iPhone that leads consumers to the better buys on the auction site.

eBay Deals

(Credit: eBay)

Launched Tuesday, eBay Deals is designed to deliver a stream of the best deals on the site from across hundreds of millions of listings. Like eBay Mobile, the company's regular iPhone app, Deals lets you search, shop, and pay for your items from your iPhone or iPod Touch.

All featured deals spotlight items with no bids, no reserve price, free or fixed-rate shipping, and less than four hours remaining to bid.

You can browse deals across eight categories, including apparel, computers, electronics, and collectibles. If you spot a deal you like, just tap on it, and its listing pops up where you can watch it or bid on it. Not crazy about the current deals? Just shake your iPhone or iPod Touch, and a new set of deals appears.

If you spot a deal that may be better for someone else, you can e-mail it or share it via your Facebook or Twitter account.

Besides browsing eBay's virtual aisles, you can search for your own deals by entering a product name, category, and price range. You can save your customized search results to return to them later.

Starting Friday, eBay will also be unveiling a "12 Days of Deals" feature promoting a new promotion each day until December 8. Friday's deal will offer Samsung's N120 Netbook.

"As the world's leading online marketplace we have insights into how people really want to shop...and they clearly want to shop on their phones," eBay Marketplaces President Lorrie Norrington said in a statement.

Though designed for the mobile crowd, eBay's daily deals can also be found online at the auction site's Deals page.

eBay has been busy lately sprucing up its mobile auction site for the holidays. The vendor recently added social networking to its eBay Mobile app, letting you share a listing through e-mail, Facebook, or Twitter.

Since its launch in 2008, eBay's mobile app has been downloaded more than 5 million times, said the company. With a purchase made every two seconds, the company said, more than $500 million worth of items are likely to be traded through eBay mobile this year.

No, this isn't The Onion.

But just look at that headline and wonder how it could possibly be true.

Well, according to Newsday, Canadian teen sensation Justin Bieber was due to conduct an album signing at the Roosevelt Field mall in Garden City, N.Y.

It seems that thousands of teenage girls turned up to mob the wondrous teen hope, a happening perhaps so frightening that Bieber did not turn up.

The Nassau County police became rather concerned that the crowd might break the glass in store windows with its shrieking. (The official word seems to have been "unruly," but teenage girls are never really that.)

So they asked a senior vice president from Island Def Jam Records (Bieber's record label), James A. Roppo, to do what record label executives often do when solving a difficult situation: tweet.

However, he is alleged to have not complied with this endearing request and thus found himself arrested, pending charges that might, according to the police, comprise criminal nuisance, endangering the welfare of a minor, and obstructing government administration.

Kevin Smith of the Nassau County Police told the AP: "We asked for his help in getting the crowd to go away by sending out a Twitter message. By not cooperating with us, we feel he put lives in danger and the public at risk."

What is somewhat peculiar is that a tweet was sent from Justin Bieber's account around the time of the arrest, reading: "they are not allowing me to come into the mall. if you don't leave, I and my fans will be arrested, as the police just told us."

Bieber followed this message up with another tweet pleading for the high-pitched wailers to disperse, just three minutes later.

All this occurred Friday. And, thanks to Bieber himself, I have embedded YouTube footage of the melee at the mall.

Bieber posted a link to this footage Saturday and tweeted, "wow. this upsets me. the mall should of had proper security. They wouldnt let me in! Gotta make this right 4 the fans."

Well, yes, it should of. Just look at the worried faces of the parents. Just listen to the screams of the aficionadas. This is the kind of nightmare many will have experienced after a large tub of dulce de leche eaten well past midnight.

I cannot imagine what Roppo might have said to the police in order to incite their wrath. However, looking at this footage, I suspect that something like "Look at these people!!!! They're outta their minds!!! You really think a tweet is going to stop them from screaming?!!!" might have been part of the dialogue.

It is also pleasantly reassuring that the mall staff appears, near the end of the footage, to have resorted to analog crowd dispersal means. Yes, someone found a loudhailer.

However, I can find no record of any arrests from the scene other than Roppo's. And certainly, no one else appears to have been arrested for refusing to tweet.

Therefore, this truly seems to be a world first. One can only look forward to the day when someone's Facebook friends cause them to be arrested for not updating their status.

Google has entered into an agreement to acquire online ad-optimization firm Teracent, the search giant announced in a blog post on Monday. The transaction is subject to several closing conditions, but is expected to close by the end of the quarter.

Google said it has been "busy releasing new features and products to help improve display advertising on the Web," according to the blog post. After examining Teracent's technology, the company felt that it fit "neatly" into its display-advertising goals, the blog said.

Teracent certainly brings something new to Google's advertising efforts. The company's technology tweaks images, products, messages, or colors to optimize ad units based on the viewer's location, what language they speak, the kind of content they're viewing, the local time, and how well particular units have performed in the past. It does all that work in real time as the algorithm examines the ad's environment.

"This technology can help advertisers get better results from their display ad campaigns," Google wrote in a blog post. "In turn, this enables publishers to make more money from their ad space and delivers Web users better ads and more ad-funded web content."

Teracent should be integrated into Google's advertising efforts by the end of the quarter. Neither company divulged how much Teracent was acquired for.