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AOL launches myAOL: Web 2.0 for the masses

This morning AOL launched myAOL, a group of three services wrapped up into one customizable page. MyAOL is made up of three services: myPage, a customizable start page akin to Pageflakes or Netvibes; Mgnet--an audiovisual mashup of news; and Favorites--which for all intents and purposes is a Web-based RSS reader. All three offer various ways of browsing, reading, and discovering news and Web content.

Since most users are already familiar with the concepts of myPage and Favorites, the real surprise here is Mgnet. This is one of the cooler things I've seen lately, and somewhat similar to Google's recently released Google News image browser. Users can pick out topics they like or are interested in, and Mgnet will pull up a small array of images linked up with story headlines. Clicking one brings up the story description in a separate pane, and users are able to vote it up or down (a la Reddit) as well as see related news stories (which are powered by Sphere).

In addition to providing stories it thinks you'll be interested in, Mgnet also keeps track of "what's hot," a small list of the most-clicked and voted-on stories. I found this more interesting than the actual AOL front page, since it's a little more visually stimulating. The one missing piece in this system is a way to see how user voting is affecting each story, something AOL will likely add later down the line.

Favorites is also impressive. As an RSS reader it's well-equipped. There's a fairly extensive listing of prepicked feeds from a variety of Web sites. There's also the option to add your own feeds, either with a straight RSS address, or by searching by URL. To keep track of your various feeds, you can set up folders, a little bit like Google Reader. You can also go in and reorder feeds with simple dragging and dropping. The one missing piece is a trashcan to delete feeds you don't want anymore, which instead is handled in a separate feeds manager.

AOL's got a pretty solid lineup of Web apps in one spot with myAOL. What it lacks in true originality, it makes up for in execution, as all three services are simple to use and feature-rich.

See more screens below.… Read more

Share your videos in several places at once: HeySpread

HeySpread is a new service from the folks at Particles (creators of HeyWatch and HeyCast) that lets users upload a single video to multiple video-hosting providers. Just pick the video you want to upload from your hard drive, and HeySpread will pull up a listing of various video hosts. All you need is log-in information for each of them, and the file will automatically get sent out to each, assuming you've got the correct credentials.

HeySpread works with YouTube, Google, and MySpace Video, along with DailyMotion, Blip.TV, and four others. In my testing with five of the nine … Read more

King.com launching new revenue-sharing games site

This morning King.com is launching its new user-generated casual games site, MyGame.com. The service combines some of the professionally made casual games offered on King.com alongside user-generated titles and those made by users with a Web-based game creation tool. Game creators who publish on MyGame.com can opt-in to a revenue-sharing program, which pays off ad clicks. The service is also promoting an advanced payment scheme similar to recording industry contracts that pays in advance to popular titles.

I had a go with MyGame's game creator yesterday, and had a good time with the three titles that are currently available for editing. Users can upload a picture either off their hard drive, or by using their Webcams. MyGame will do its best to map your face, as well as give you a quick and dirty cropping tool to fine-tune. You can then test the game to make any last-minute adjustments to your face.

Once done, users (even unregistered ones) get quick-sharing links, along with embed codes to put their creation on a blog or Web site, which I've done below. Users who decide to register with the service are given some extra power tools, like a stats manager, high-score list, and guest book.

I'm looking forward to seeing some of MyGame's future game offerings, along with some of the user-submitted content, although between Kongregate's recent inclusion of badges, and that oh-so-addicting McDonald's Flash game, MyGame must compete for my unfortunate lack of attention span. … Read more

Open source: The numbers don't tell the whole story

Savio has had some interesting posts lately crunching numbers related to open source investments and, most currently, the FSF's financial ability to litigate GPLv3. In both cases, though, I think he's getting a bit too attached to the calculator and detached from reality. (Not that I ever stray from reality.... :-)

(That said, in both cases I appreciate the exercise that he walks us through. It's useful.)

With regard to the FSF's ability to litigate over GPLv3, this misses the point. The FSF has never needed to rely on litigation to enforce the GPL. That's what public pressure is all about, and the open source community can deliver that in abundance. I've yet to see it fail.… Read more

Office for Mac and the interoperability divide

I was reading the latest issue of Mac|Life tonight (I liked it better as Mac Addict, by the way), and it struck me how dependent Apple is on Microsoft. For all the cool things that come with Mac hardware and OS X, a large swath of the Mac user population would be crippled or wiped out if Microsoft decided to stop supporting Office for Mac.

The Mac faithful (of which I am part) won't like to hear this, but it's true. OpenOffice is an excellent program (It actually is now--three years ago it was rubbish), but many of us simply couldn't use it "in production." Sure, I could run Office for Windows in Parallels' coherence mode (and almost certainly would), but that's an unnecessarily roundabout way of solving something best done directly.

This is a relatively small problem for Mac users, right? I suppose so. The same thing, however, is true in the enterprise. Many prefer to run Linux for an increasing array of server-based applications. But they don't want to be stranded, just as I would be on my Mac without Office. Net net: interoperability is a Very Good Thing. It's good for open source, but it's also good for Microsoft (and everyone else, because no one has a complete lock on any particular area of enterprise software).

All of which makes me wish we could, as an industry, talk about interoperability with more candor. More honesty. This isn't a dig at Microsoft, though it has been guilty of conflating patents (a desire to get paid) with interoperability (a desire to get along). The two don't necessarily go together.… Read more

Marten Mickos on the "un-value" of compromise

I love Marten Mickos, and it is quotations like this in a Computerworld interview that reinforce my respect for him. Asked whether MySQL would ever go partially proprietary in order to get a higher download-to-sale conversion rate, Marten replied:

We've had that debate many times. I think we might win a few new customers, but we would lose 2 million users. We're not ready for that kind of compromise. We also look at other companies who have built closed-source products on top of open-source ones. They don't seem successful.… Read more

In the trenches with...Kevin Henrikson of Zimbra

We next go "In the Trenches" with Kevin Henrikson of Zimbra. Zimbra wasn't the first to build a slick email system with a strong AJAX feel, but it has clearly taken the lead among its peers. The backbone of that position is its engineering team, with Kevin at the heart of the organization.

As it turns out, regardless of all the "sex appeal" that Zimbra has in the market (and it has plenty), Kevin's comments reveal that it's community feedback that makes the company tick. Community feedback and an active engineering team that solicits and acts on that feedback, often in real-time. This is the heart of a successful open source business, and Kevin shows us how it's done.

Name, company, title, and what you actually do

Kevin Henrikson, director of Engineering, Zimbra. I currently manage our client engineering team which develops the Zimbra Advanced Client (AJAX based) and Standard Client (JSP/HTML based), the latter being Zimbra's answer to accessibility (screen readers), low-bandwidth, and older PCs. Along with John Holder, I am also responsible for Zimbra's open source community touch points (forums, wiki, blog, etc). I've also had a chance to speak at several conferences on many related topics including AJAX optimization, AJAX offline, and building large scale messaging systems.… Read more

Western Digital 250GB My Book External Hard Drive for $94.99 after a $10 savings

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The Open Source CEO: Eero Teerikorpi, Continuent (Part 22)

I thought it would be a good idea to shift gears a bit to talk with the CEO of an open source startup that has Europe in its veins, especially one with Finland coursing through it. So I caught up with Eero Teerikorpi, CEO of Continuent, which provides database high availability software (for MySQL and PostgreSQL).

I've known Eero for some time (though, in my ignorance, I once asked if Eero is a Greek name. He replied, "No, Matt. I come from the land of open source." Finland, in other words. :-)

Name, position, and company of executive

Eero Teerikorpi, CEO, Continuent.… Read more