[there are six news stories in this post, some interesting reads.]
ZDNet News :: Emode launches Friendster foe
By Paul Festa
...San Francisco-based Emode launched the Tickle Social Network after a two-month test, or beta, release. Designed to compete with Friendster, Tribe.net and other so-called social networking sites, Tickle lets people post profiles to help them make business and personal connections.
Emode said it is profitable already through its fee-based personality quizzes and matchmaking service. The company claims more than 6 million users of the latter service, and 500,000 of the Tickle beta, out of 15 million active members overall. Investors in Emode include August Capital...
rediff.com :: Indian to take on iTunes, Napster
by Tanmaya Kumar Nanda in New York
...Come November, a new Internet company hopes to go boldly where not many have dared. Srivats Sampath's company, www.mercora.com, is poised for launch, and will join a limited but growing number of online sites for buying and sharing digital music files.
Sampath, who cofounded McAfee and quit as its CEO when the network security and antivirus firm merged with Network Associates, decided to put his own money into what is seen by many as a still murky area of e-commerce.
"After the merger, I started to spend my time researching, among other things, copyright law, electronic marketplaces, social networking and the intricacies of the music business, and that's really what got me started," says Sampath, who read over 20 books on related issues.
He finally decided to go head to head with the likes of iTunes by Apple, which has taken the lead in sales of online music files, and Napster. "Our vision for Mercora is to create an alternate, highly efficient, Internet-centric marketplace that fundamentally rearchitects the existing recorded music business model," Sampath says of his baby. "Mercora will bring sellers and buyers of music together in a secure, trusted marketplace."
What Sampath has in mind is a peer-to-peer file-swapping service, but at a price. Additionally, he hopes to create unique online societies that will hang out together virtually based on their choice of music.
Sampath has the 99 cents-a-song model in mind. Additionally, he will use Windows copy-protection but insists they are "agnostic to the DRM (we) use - but at some point, we will also support the Real Networks Helix DRM."...
TheFeature :: RFID Zeitgeist
By Howard Rheingold
Mentioned in this post:
RFID Journal, Prada Epicenter, Wired, Gen. Tommy Franks, Benetton, Byron Reeves and Clifford Nass, and Mark Pesce.
...We have never before lived in a world where your telephone knows your name, social networks hitch rides on objects and places, doorknobs decide who gets into a room and know who has entered, and every place you go, every thing you touch, is more likely than not to contain a processor and a miniature radio.
"RFID" isn't a household word yet, but geeks are beginning to care about "Radio Frequency ID tags" because of the privacy implications. The cost and size of microprocessor technology had dropped to the point where a sensor, a computer, and a radio transponder can be woven into clothing or embedded in the packaging of consume packaged goods. The notion that your razor blades might be spying on you is scary, but privacy isn't all there is to it. RFIDs are only the beginning, just as the first microchip, suitable only for desk calculators, was only the beginning for chips and PCs in the 1970s. Think about what it will feel like to inhabit a world where every object we handle, consume, or wear is likely to contain computing gizmos...
Movie rental services charge into online battle
by Chris Lake
...The nascent online DVD rental market could emerge as one of the key growth sectors in the UK, judging by the recent launch of two new companies that hope to replicate the offline success of Blockbuster on the web. ...
Video Island's Saul Klein has been watching the UK market for more than a year and believes the increasing penetration of DVD as a medium (from 25% to 75% over the next three years) presents a "real opportunity to build a successful business".
The VC-backed company is using personalisation and social networking tools to create a community-based service, with users recommending and reviewing films to provide insight for others. Klein said: "Personalisation and community features are very important - we allow film fans to rate films and write reviews to help inform other users. And we have a management team with bags of expertise, which we believe differentiates us from the competition."...
...BELMONT, Calif.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Oct. 14, 2003--Entopia, Inc.(TM), a provider of information solutions, today unveiled Entopia Enterprise Social Networks Analysis, a diagnostic tool that enables managers to optimize information flow. By combining Entopia's dynamic expertise location with its visualization techniques, Entopia's latest application identifies the social networks within the enterprise related to a specific topic. These "people maps" instantly illustrate the subject matter experts, information bottlenecks and disconnected communities with an enterprise. Currently being exhibited at KMWorld & Intranets 2003, October 14 - 16, 2003, Santa Clara Calif., Entopia Social Networks Analysis is a solution built upon Entopia K-Bus, its enterprise knowledge infrastructure technology. Entopia Enterprise Social Networks Analysis harnesses the existing content in, and user activity around, various enterprise-wide repositories for use by the human resources, sales, mergers and acquisitions, compliance and customer support teams to identify experts, build teams, improve communication, identify displacement problems and avoid work duplication.
"Social network analysis has moved from an academic discipline to a critical business competence. New software tools provide real time analysis of knowledge worker networks," said French Caldwell, vice president of Gartner Research. "Who knows what and about whom is the most important knowledge for businesses trying to close a critical sale, launch a new product, or rapidly pull together a new project team." ...
Silicon Valley Biz Ink :: World's Largest Online Dating Network Launches JewishFriendFinder.com
...PALO ALTO, Calif., Oct. 16 /PRNewswire/ -- FriendFinder Inc., the world's largest operator of online dating and social networking communities, today announced the launch of JewishFriendFinder.com. Created to answer the unmet needs of busy Jewish singles looking for marriage, dating, and friendship, the new site focuses on values specific to the Jewish community that are not addressed by other dating resources. JewishFriendFinder is the latest addition to the market-leading FriendFinder network, a series of customized destination sites designed to meet the unique cultural, religious, or demographic needs of individual communities...
K-Collector