Ilya Vedrashko runs down Microsoft's answer to Google Earth, Virtual Earth 3D which launched with its first 15 cities, Boston among them. The place is "peppered with billboards" provided by Massive, the in-game ad system Microsoft bought earlier this year. Unlike Google Earth, the maps are displayed in the browser - Internet Explorer only, that is. But you will have to download some plug-ins. Look for developers to add on, as Microsoft is opening up the application programming interface (API). I like the textured buildings!
70 million iPods and more than a billion iTunes songs sold, makes Apple the single biggest target for the anti-DRM (digital rights management) movement. Why? Download a song onto your iPod, and it will only play on your iPod - nowhere else. In response, geeky groups from the People's Republic of Cambridge recently held an iPod Liberation Event where users were walked through the process of hacking their iPods to circumvent the built-in DRM. The risks are great. Reduced battery life, increased crashes and the loss of your iTunes music is a sure thing. Unfortunately DRM is simpler to use than freedom.
Riya's Like.com lets you search for hard-to-describe items by using pictures instead of words. Browse through celebrity photos and if you love a certain pair of black stilettos, click on the picture and Like.com will search over 200 online stores for shoes that look like Britney's. It's hard for computers to extrapolate context from a photo. Riya is still trying to figure out how to do visual search for shirts. The problem? The context. Shirts on a mannequin, lying flat or on people, look different in pixels.
It's cool to inhale, when it's your medicine. Companies like Boston-based Cambridge Consultants, Cambridge-based Alkermes and Waltham-based Syntonix are developing breakthrough convenient inhalers for medicines. Doctors may be taking a wait-and-see approach until more data is available on the long-term effects of medicine on the lungs, but clinical trials are underway for inhaled insulin and inhalers that treat osteoporosis or infertility or even prevent the flu. Cambridge Consultants has a four-cent inhaler aimed at addressing pandemics. Lots of money to be made here and potentially, lots of happy patients.
It's been a bad year for Wal-Mart. Same-store sales for October rose a slim 0.5 percent, the smallest increase in nearly six years, and the company has come under fire for everything from the low wages it pays workers to the small retailers it pushes out of business. The largest retailer in history is now in a full-scale reputation crisis. 2 to 8 percent of the company's customers have stopped shopping there, "because of negative press they have heard." Wal-Mart's response so far? Make green overtures. Hire spin doctors. Fire the ad agency. Make fake blogs.
Get ready. It's 1.5 million. At $5 a pop, that's $7.5 million in revenue. The revenue is gravy. But the ultimate ROI? A Staples brand icon made it into our cultural currency. Alan Siegel, CEO of the branding firm Siegel + Gale admits that it's a testament to good advertising but also that it's "an elegant metaphor for the fact that everyone is frustrated as hell about how hard it is to get things done today."
Update 3:13pm EST:
Biz Filtah reader Brian DeVasto writes:
"OK, I work for Staples, and had no idea they sold so many Easy Buttons! That said, I feel an important omission from your blog entry is that the first one million dollars earned was donated to the Boys and Girls Clubs of America."
Very cool. Now that really closes the loop on a great brand success story.
Clay Shirky defines a meganiche as "a thin slice of the Web that nonetheless represents roughly a million users." It's a new category that's caused by the fact that there are now one billion people online. Do the math. Ten years ago one-tenth of 1 percent of Web users amounted to about 36,000 people. Today the same one-tenth of 1 percent is a million people. That's why a site like GaiaOnline that caters to anime fans can rack up more page views that MSNBC or Oprah. Meganiches grow at low cost and through word of mouth. What they have is authenticity and a laser focus on one thing that 0.1 percent of the world cares passionately about.
A recent poll of 600 business owners found that 89 percent said they plan to vote. Among those who have owned their business for more than five years, that number rose to 91 percent. Tax cuts, health-care costs, and energy prices - not Iraq - top the list of concerns among the nation's entrepreneurs.
VOTE TOMORROW. Go put it in your Outlook now.
Not long ago Stephen Baker admitted that before blogs and the ability to count clicks, he used to write for an audience of one...his editor-in-chief at BusinessWeek. But now editors have access to data and constant feedback so the audience isn't just one anymore.
That change has something to with why Gannett (publisher of USAToday and 90 other papers) decided to make the huge structural switch to crowdsourcing...meaning:
"Prioritize local news over national news; publish more user-generated content; become 24-7 news operations, in which the newspapers do less and the websites do much more; and finally, use crowdsourcing methods to put readers to work as watchdogs, whistle-blowers and researchers in large, investigative features.
Today Google announced an ad service for newspapers, which Jeff Jarvis says newspapers could have done on their own a long time ago. Jarvis, an outspoken critic, says newspapers are in a free fall.
But even though newspaper circulation is down, audiences still want newspapers...just not the paper. In fact, traffic to newspaper websites is on the rise.
So the question is - will the newspaper biz pull the rip cord fast enough to stop the fall?
Tim O'Reilly wrote a much debated post "What is Web 2.0" last year prior to the Web 2.0 conference. Now, on the eve of the next one he announces that he and John Musser have just published a how-to paper called "Web 2.0 Principles and Best Practices." Buy it for $375. Look for lots of news coming out of this week's Web 2.0 conference. All the heavy hitters are there.
70 million iPods and more than a billion iTunes songs sold, makes Apple the single biggest target for the anti-DRM (digital rights management) movement. Why? Download a song onto your iPod, and it will only play on your iPod - nowhere else. In response, geeky groups from the People's Republic of Cambridge recently held an 
Riya's 
Get ready. It's 1.5 million. At $5 a pop, that's $7.5 million in revenue. The revenue is gravy. But the ultimate ROI? A Staples brand icon made it into our cultural currency. Alan Siegel, CEO of the branding firm Siegel + Gale admits that it's a testament to good advertising but also that it's "an elegant metaphor for the fact that everyone is frustrated as hell about how hard it is to get things done today."
A recent poll of 600 business owners found that 89 percent said they plan to vote. Among those who have owned their business for more than five years, that number rose to 91 percent. Tax cuts, health-care costs, and energy prices - not Iraq - top the list of concerns among the nation's entrepreneurs. 
