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Open up your schedule book with TimeDriver

Rafe Needleman — Thu, 21 Aug 2008 23:45:00 GMT

The meeting time broker TimeDriver, which has been in closed testing since I covered it back in January, will finally enter its public beta period on Monday. I had a chance to play with the product Thursday. For a lot of people, this service could be a great help.

TimeDriver is designed to help people who need to schedule a lot of one-on-one meetings. If you're interviewing job candidates, for example, or taking appointments with customers, you can set up either one-time or recurring blocks of time, and send people links that let them grab appointment times in those blocks that remain unclaimed.

You can also just put a link on your Web page or in your e-mails and take appointments from anyone. Yikes.

My time is yours. Live demo. Try it.

TimeDriver can link to Google or Outlook calendars if you want to make sure you're not booking appointments on top of your one-off meetings, and the system will then write appointments back into your calendar when people claim times. There are advanced options that can prevent people from scheduling last-minute meetings or from seeing more than a few time slots; you wouldn't want to look unbusy, would you? But there's no way to automatically enforce buffer times between meetings, which might matter if you make house calls.

The service has tools to send out blast e-mails to people (for example, job candidates you want to interview) and will track all their responses. Coming soon is a new Outlook plug-in that will let you send meeting requests from within your Outlook client itself; in the current version you can only manage mass meeting invitations from within TimeDriver.

My weekly demo timeslots.

TimeDriver is a different beast than a meeting negotiation product like TimeBridge, which allows for multi-person meetings and encourages a form of voting on best times to meet. That kind of solution is better for people like me who treat each meeting separately; TimeDriver is better for people who see one meeting as much like the next.

The basic TimeDriver service is free. Paid and enterprise versions will get additional features, such as calendar pooling--so multiple people can service appointment requests--analytics tools, and custom branding options.

Future versions may include variable privacy, so specific people or groups can see more detail of your calendar, or so some users need confirmation from you before a meeting is booked, but others don't.

I look forward to seeing this tool integrated into other online customer management solutions, like Salesforce.com. Or better yet, adopted by my dentist.

See also: Timebridge (review), Jiffle (formerly iPolipo; review), ScheduleOnce (review).

Couch surf or rent your basement with Roomorama

Josh Lowensohn — Thu, 21 Aug 2008 22:49:00 GMT

If you're looking to find a place to crash in a foreign city and have tried solutions like Craigslist or AirBed & Breakfast, you've got to check out Roomorama. It's a peer-to-peer rental community that lets visitors find a cheap, low-key place to stay, and gives renters with some extra space a chance to make some cash.

Like AirBed & Breakfast, people with some extra space can put their place up on the market. If someone's coming into town during the dates you set as being available, they'll have the option to book it. Once you approve the booking, the payment goes through Roomorama's system (which uses PayPal) and the traveler gets a confirmation.

As a traveler you can sort out listings by all kinds of factors, but my favorite is the simple matrix of amenities. You can click to highlight the things you want, like Wi-Fi, parking, laundry, and the all important hot tub. It'll filter the results in real time with every click, and if there's not something that matches up with what you're looking for you can opt to make it a request. If someone's been on the fence about listing their place they can then claim your request with their offering. If an agreement is met you can book it on the spot.

Roomorama is currently limited to New York City with other cities to come. In the meantime, you can list and request rooms in different cities using the aforementioned shout-out system that does the matching for you.

[via Delicious]

List places for others to stay or find a place to crash yourself with Roomorama, a hotel service of sorts that cuts out the middle man.

(Credit: CNET Networks)

Yahoo OneSearch finds a home on your Nokia

Jessica Dolcourt — Thu, 21 Aug 2008 22:00:00 GMT

(Credit: Yahoo Inc.)

Updated on 8/21/08 at 3:54 pm to correct information about the models supported.

Starting Thursday, searching the Web with a Nokia series 60 phone will be a little faster.

Yahoo's mobile team has released a free shortcut for OneSearch, Yahoo's search engine, that will live on your phone's home screen. The OneSearch widget promises to cut your labor two ways; first, by giving you a place to begin a Web search as soon as you turn on the phone and second, by suggesting search terms as soon as you start typing.

The home screen search widget has already been in effect on other mobile platforms, but this add-on software gives it greater prominence than it might otherwise receive.

The convenience of the home screen search bar could also make this OneSearch widget the most effective of Yahoo's latest experiments in pushing its search platform, including last April's launch of OneSearch 2.0, a version that accepts voice search.

Yahoo has its stalwart supporters, but this application's degree of success will depend on just how many Google search-loyalists end up suspending that preference in order to save time with Yahoo's search bar.

Yahoo's OneSearch shortcut will work immediately on all Nokia series 60 phones, including N70, N95, N73, and E65 models, with support for other platforms reportedly coming soon.

Bebo appoints exec to handle original content

Caroline McCarthy — Thu, 21 Aug 2008 19:29:00 GMT

The knife-wielding cast of 'KateModern.'

(Credit: Bebo)

Bebo doesn't just want to be that social network that AOL bought--it also wants to be a hub for entertainment.

The site, now part of the Time Warner unit's "People Networks" division, has appointed the London-based Kelly Brett as its head of original productions.

Brett had last worked on KateModern, a Bebo-hosted video series created by Lonelygirl15 production company Eqal (then known as LG15 Productions), and she also counts projects for television networks like the BBC, Sky, and ITV on her resume.

The youth-oriented Bebo, with most of its popularity concentrated in the United Kingdom and Ireland, has hosted several original series, in addition to KateModern: Gap Year, Sofia's Diary, and The Secret Life of Sam King. Sofia's Diary was later picked up by the U.K.'s Channel Five network, making it the first British TV show to arise on the Web. In the United States, the buzzed-about Web series Quarterlife was picked up by NBC but canceled after a single episode due to low ratings.

Brett's first project is the currently airing Sam King, a collaboration between Bebo and Universal Music about a fictional Universal mail room employee whose dealings with real-life bands and artists are detailed in the comedy series.

The "social network as entertainment venue" model has been explored in varying degrees by different companies; in the U.S., the best-known example of the phenomenon is News Corp.'s MySpace, which hosts the occasional original show on its MySpaceTV platform. It also served as the platform for the final episode of the syndicated Lonelygirl15.

Your matchmaker for class action lawsuits: SueEasy

Bob Walsh — Thu, 21 Aug 2008 19:03:00 GMT

SueEasy.com is a matchmaking app that connects people who have major and minor grievances in life with attorneys eager to file class action lawsuits for them. Like any good Web app, SueEasy is free, simple, and perhaps even effective.

Let's say your Web hosting company leaves you twisting in the wind, or you come back from a trip and your cell phone bill is more than your mortgage payment. In the olden days, if you were sufficiently harmed and angry, and had the fortitude of a sumo wrestler, maybe you could find an attorney who would spend months, if not years, trying to locate others similarly harmed. No more: the Internet is here to help.

To start the process of getting your would-be case off the ground, you fill in a free registration, then describe your medical, financial, product, employment, or other beef. Others can chime in. Or you can shop existing class action suits. In either case, attorneys and law firms interested in your case contact you directly regarding representation and participation in a given class action suit.

Registration is currently free for both consumers and lawyers, but the company may charge attorneys finders feeds for using the service.

Have you been wronged?

Like any interesting Web app, SueEasy is attracting competitors: Time Magazine reports that WhoICanSue.com will launch next month, with the mission of letting people find out from real lawyers if they have a case, and giving lawyers first crack at would-be clients for a $1,000 annual fee.

The class action activities at SueEasy.com range from the trivial to the tragic, and while the site claims "50,000 cases processed," there's nothing to back up that claim that I could find. Is SueEasy digital ambulance chasing or using the power of the Web to fuel the righting of real wrongs? You can be the judge of that.

A much deeper Facebook experience coming to iPhone users

Josh Lowensohn — Thu, 21 Aug 2008 18:23:00 GMT

On Wednesday night, Facebook previewed the next version of its popular iPhone application, which has retained one of the top spots in Apple's App Store since its launch in early July.

The new mobile version is a complete overhaul that shares much in common with the redesign of Facebook's Web version--a move that could be paving the way for mobile advertising and applications later on down the road.

The biggest addition in version 2.0 is support for real-time status updates, including integration with the service's messaging and live chat. At the time of launch, users will be getting these updates only while the application is running, with the push notifications coming when Apple flips that switch--presumably in a software update in late September, as promised.

For those using the application as a communications hub, the internetwork mail system has also been given an overhaul, letting users search through messages by words or entire phrases. It also pulls in the entirety of members' in-boxes, as opposed to the status quo of showing only the 30 most recent messages.

Between these two enhancements and an improved News Feed that better integrates media and shared links, the next version should be far more compelling. Anxious users will have to wait until sometime next month to get their hands on it, though.

Below, I've bundled together all the screenshots, courtesy of Facebook. If you're a Facebook user, you can also click through the entire set and see comments from other Facebook users here.

Amazon launches hard disk in the sky

Rafe Needleman — Thu, 21 Aug 2008 16:50:00 GMT

Amazon on Thursday announced that it is releasing its persistent storage option, called Elastic Block Service (EBS), to its suite of Amazon Web Services cloud computing options. The company announced this direction in April.

Previously, data associated with jobs running on Amazon's cloud computing platform, EC2, were attached to the jobs themselves; developers did not have access to their files and information except through EC2. With EBS, developers can create cloud-based file systems that they can access from whatever applications they wish. Amazon's other cloud storage systems, S3 and SimpleDB, don't offer this low-level access.

Based on the scalable Amazon Web Services infrastructure, EBS will be tolerant of most failures, but "not as redundant as S3 storage," according to the RightScale blog. However, Amazon customers will be able to back up snapshots of their EBS installations into S3.

EBS volumes will be available in sizes from 1 gigabyte to 1 terabyte. The service will cost 10 cents per gigabyte per month.

Further reading:
Werner Vogels: Elastic Block Store has launched.
AWS blog: Bring us your data.
RightScale blog: Amazon's Elastic Block Store explained.

Video status site 12seconds launches API

Michelle Thatcher — Thu, 21 Aug 2008 15:01:00 GMT

TweetDeck now incorporates 12seconds videos (click to enlarge)

Video sharing site 12seconds, which launched its private alpha late last month, has declared its intent to become the premier site for video status (the Twitter of video, if you will). To that end, the company announced on Thursday morning the launch of its first API as well as three launch partners who will be incorporating 12seconds into their own platforms.

TweetDeck, the Adobe Air client that helps you organize information from Twitter, will now let users follow 12seconds channels and play videos inside the TweetDeck client. Microreview site Blippr (review) is letting users record a 12second video review in tandem with (or instead of) a text review. And London-based Phreadz, which is still in invite-only beta, has integrated 12seconds videos into its threaded multimedia service.

A post on the company's blog emphasizes that the feature is still in the early stages ("think of it as an alpha API"); developers interested in adapting 12seconds feeds can find more information on the company's API page. Of course, the 12seconds service itself is still invitation-only, but you can leave an e-mail address on this page to request an invite.

Facebook's 'Engagement Ads' tests the waters

Caroline McCarthy — Thu, 21 Aug 2008 14:21:00 GMT

This post was updated at 8:02 a.m. PT with comment from Facebook.

Facebook is making the advertisements on its site "smarter" and more interactive, Forrester Research analyst Jeremiah Owyang wrote on his blog Thursday. Owyang had been briefed by Facebook monetization director Tim Kendall on a Facebook initiative called "Engagement Ads" that is slated to launch later on Thursday.

Facebook confirmed the program to CNET News later on Thursday morning. "Facebook is conducting a trial of Engagement Ads over the next few months as part of its continual development of additional advertising concepts," a statement from the company read. "The initial three versions of Engagement Ads will allow users to make a comment, give a virtual gift or become a fan of a brand's Facebook Page directly within the ad. People also can view recent friends who made comments, gave a gift or became a fan both within the ad and as those actions are shared through News Feed."

The social network has already made it clear that it wants its ads to be more than just display ads. Users can give a thumbs-up or thumbs-down to an ad and then tell Facebook why they did so. The company's targeted Social Ads are also getting deeper: putting "pizza" in a status message can instantly turn up an ad for online-ordering company Seamless Web accompanied by a photo of a pizza.

Engagement Ads are different, though. Members can leave comments on ads that then show up in their friends' News Feeds, sign up as a "fan" of a product through Facebook's "Pages" feature, and use an ad as a way to send a brand-related virtual gift to a friend (if the brand signs up for this). The Engagement Ads module will show up on the home page next to the News Feed--it won't be replacing the display ads on profiles or Facebook's other Social Ads.

"To combat dismal click-through rates of traditional (social network) advertisements, these features emulate widgets and encourage users to increase member adoption, viral growth, and brand interaction," Owyang explained in his blog post. "Brands will only succeed with these 'WidgetAds' if they create content that puts community first, lean on new interactions, integrate with other tools, plan for the long haul, and change how they measure success--traditional Internet advertising tactics won't apply."

Facebook's history with advertising has been spotty, at best. Like most social networks, it relies on ad dollars, but its revenues remain low because social sites traditionally don't attract the click-through rates of, say, search advertising. When it launched its 'Social Ads' initiative last November, one major component--the allegedly intrusive "Beacon"--was met with so much negative publicity that Facebook's executives modified the program and apologized.

But Beacon hasn't gone away. Just last week, it spurred a class action lawsuit; while the suit's claims are shaky at best, it does show that audiences don't necessarily take too kindly to unfamiliar forms of advertising.

Yahoo launches iPhone-optimized search site

Caroline McCarthy — Thu, 21 Aug 2008 14:16:00 GMT

(Credit: Ryan Grove on Flickr)

Earlier this week, Yahoo rolled out a new mobile search site designed specifically for use on Apple's iPhone and iPod Touch devices. Some background information was provided by Yahoo developer Ryan Grove on his blog.

Grove explained that he wanted to make as few concessions and compromises as possible when it came to bringing Yahoo search to the iPhone. So the new mobile site comes with some goodies, too: SearchAssist, to auto-complete inquiries; compatibility with Yahoo's SearchMonkey widgetized results (if you're logged in), and search shortcuts like weather, movie times, and local information.

Early reviews seem to be positive. "Thanks for finally giving me the reason to get one of those damn iPhones," a commenter on Grove's blog wrote.