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'The Simpsons' avatar creator: A marketing site done right

Up until this weekend I hadn't really been too excited about seeing the upcoming Simpsons feature-length movie. That was until I laid my eyes on the film's Web site.

Like most other movie marketing sites out there, it's full of a lot of Flash with bouncy navigation and a nearly unbearable amount of sound effects. There are the usual mini-games (both of which I might add are quite enjoyable), and links to the movie's MySpace profile (it is Fox, after all). The real gem however, is the Simpsons avatar builder--a piece-by-piece character maker that lets people … Read more

Bought an iPhone? Fortunately you can afford to sync it with myFunambol

If you were able to sell your brother into indentured servitude to get an iPhone, you now face a new dilemma: how to get all of your contact/calendar/etc. data onto that gorgeous device. Well, here's a little blessing from the open source community: free, over-the-air (i.e., no cables) synchronization of all that grubby old data onto your shiny new device, courtesy of myFunambol.

myFunambol is currently by invitation only, but you can apply here by clicking on the "Sign up!" button.… Read more

Open source @ SAIC: Wayne Waddoups speaks

Last week The Open Road caught up with Justin Steinman @ Novell and Mike Olson @ Oracle to discover how open source factors into these companies' businesses. This time, we're switching gears a bit to talk with a company that sells services around software - both open source and proprietary - rather than a software company.

Being familiar with the interesting open source work happening at SAIC, I decided to talk with two members of its Open Source Community of Practice: Ryan Brunton, a developer within SAIC's Open Source Community of Practice, and Wayne Waddoups, vice president of Strategy, SAIC Office of Technology. SAIC has long worked with projects like Linux and MySQL, but it's the cutting edge work it's doing with open source applications and infrastructure that caught my eye. More to the point, and more to Wayne's and Ryan's response, I wanted to know how open source helps SAIC build its business.

Just as enterprise software vendors have their P&Ls tied to proprietary software (making adoption of open source more difficult than it otherwise would be), so, too, do tier-one systems integrators like SAIC, Accenture, etc. How does SAIC view open source, given revenues of $8.2 billion that might well point it back to proprietary software?

Wayne and Ryan write:… Read more

Some MySpace profiles hit with a Web attack

At some point within the last week, some MySpace user pages were seeded with malicious computer code. The malicious code seeks to exploit Microsoft Windows and Internet Explorer using recently patched security holes. The hope is that you haven't patched your computer yet. If you're a MySpace visitor and you visit one of the infected pages, you'll be redirected to a fake MySpace log-in page aiming to steal the visitor's MySpace user name and password. The attack employs phishing and drive-by download techniques.

SANS' Internet Storm Center offers a detailed breakdown of the attack.

Four more open source startups to watch

Matthew Aslett is highlighting four open source startups to watch: Aptar, GravityZoo, Loopfuse, and Untangle. I've talked about Loopfuse and Untangle before, but Aptar and GravityZoo are news to me.

That's one of the great things about the commercial open source ecosystem right now. People can complain that there aren't enough (public) examples of success yet, but one of the great examples of general commercial open source success is that there are so many new companies getting funded and/or getting traction. This is a vibrant, growing ecosystem.

Growing in breadth, but also growing in depth.… Read more

MySpace's video czar gives details on new 'TV' endeavor

On Wednesday, CNET News.com checked in with Jeff Berman, MySpace.com's general manager of video operations, to hear more about the gargantuan social network's latest project: MySpace TV. The New York Times reported Tuesday that MySpace would be refurbishing its in-house video operations this week, creating a new video hub at myspacetv.com (site not yet active) to host a mix of amateur and professional media content. Berman filled us in on exactly what to expect.

"It's really just the next step in what has been a very busy few months for us on the … Read more

Slide show roundup: Custom earphones, tech for summer road trips, and CUVs

Summer has officially arrived, and our Car Tech editors have put together some photos of cool tech to take on the road. We also have some pictures of crossover SUVs, or CUVs, which you also can take on the road. Well, you could take the pictures on the road, but I really meant the cars.

Something you may not want to take on the road (or at least not while you're in the driver's seat) is the futuristic-looking MyVu Personal Media Viewer. Finally, Donald Bell shows us what it's like to get custom-molded earphones. It involves pink … Read more

News Roundup: AOL, CircleUp, MediaMaster

AOL relaunches its news service. AOL relaunched its news service with an all-new design earlier this morning. In addition to adding an extra column, it now features some Web 2.0 goodies such as a tag cloud of popular story headlines, and the most-read stories and comment threads. The service will also aggregate news from other sites. Read more about it here.

CircleUp launches embeddable widget. CircleUp [ review], the social-planning service has a new widget called MyQuestions that lets people add their questions and subsequent list or responses to blogs, Web sites, or social-networking profiles. Users can interact with these … Read more

MySQL innovating toward an IPO, BusinessWeek says

It couldn't happen to a better set of people. As BusinessWeek reports, MySQL is well on its way to an IPO. The interesting thing is what it's doing to get there:

...[C]an MySQL keep up the growth without adding hefty sales and marketing costs?and getting squeezed by competitors? The company employs just 30 field sales staff out of a head count of 360 and strives to close deals more quickly than rivals. Most employees work from home. "Managing the cost of sales and marketing in an open-source company is the key to profitability," says Mickos, sitting in a small, spartan office adjacent to a sea of cubes in the company's Silicon Valley digs. "We're not just innovating in software, we're innovating in sales."… Read more