Webware

Om Malik, founder of GigaOm.

(Credit: GigaOm)

Om Malik, the head of the Giga Omni Media group of tech blogs, said on Friday he is moving his ad business from John Battelle's Federated Media to a new advertising network IDG launched in March.

The companies, which have partnered for three years (and weathered differences of opinion involving a scandal over "conversational marketing" in which the writing of Malik, Battelle, and other bloggers was featured in ads for Microsoft), are splitting amicably. They are characterizing the move as them having grown in different directions, according to Malik and Federated Media Publisher Chas Edwards.

Giga Omni Media's seven Web sites are small vertical sites, which are more suited for a company with a trade publishing background like IDG, Edwards said in an interview.

Meanwhile, "the Federated Media approach is the Conde Nast or Time Inc. approach, (working with) larger brands, fewer of them, and national and global advertisers," he said. "Our model has not been well-suited to take those smaller sites where they wanted to go.

"I think it's actually a wonderful move for Om and, frankly, for Federated Media," Edwards added.

In a blog posting, Malik explained the situation like this:

"Progress is often accompanied by a divergence of ideas and ambitions within partnerships. At Giga Omni Media, we have been developing a network that revolves around niche verticals. As our needs became more specialized, we sat down with the folks at Federated to try and figure out how we could continue to work together. But both sides quickly realized that instead it was time to wrap up what has been a successful business relationship."

The situation is completely different from the circumstances that led to news aggregator Digg to switch from Federated Media to Microsoft for its advertising last year. While Microsoft serves up the contextual and display ads on Digg, Federated Media handles the sponsorships, including some banner ads, Edwards said.

(Credit: Disney-Pixar)

Disney is fighting a piracy war over its acclaimed film Wall-E against a company that its venture capital arm invested in, according to a report from The Wall Street Journal.

The infringing company, 56.com, a Chinese video sharing site that's similar to YouTube, hosted several full-length bootlegs of Wall-E that were freely available on the company's site. The bootlegs were added by users of the site months ago, but only recently have they been fully removed from its pages.

Piracy in China is nothing new, but the fact that 56.com featured Disney movies on its site is ironic, considering Disney's venture capital division, Steamboat Ventures, invested in the video sharing company back in 2006. Although the exact amount is unknown, the Journal claims the investment is substantial, but less than $30 million.

John Ball, founder and managing director of Steamboat, told the Journal that his company was aware that pirated content was commonplace on the site when it made its investment in 56.com, but he was confident that the video service would remove illegal material quickly and "help the legitimate evolution of digital content online."

A quick search of 56.com yielded no results for "Wall-E" on Friday, but it wasn't difficult to find copies of other prominent films in their entirety. But now that Disney has been affected by 56.com, it will be interesting to see if any more of the company's films crop up on the popular Chinese site.

Although text messaging is still one of the favorite pastimes for children and adults alike, software firm Geodesic believes that mobile instant messaging will cannibalize SMS and become the de facto form of communication through cell phones, going forward.

The company offers a tool called Mundu IM, which recently entered its fourth iteration. The software provides users with an IM service that works with AIM, Google Talk, ICQ, MSN, Yahoo, and Jabber accounts, with collaboration across the Web and wireless devices.

Mundu IM is currently supported on most mobile phones running Symbian, BlackBerry, Windows Mobile, Palm OS, and Java platforms. The service also has a iPhone Web interface, which allows users of the Apple smartphone to log in to their favorite IM application without requiring a download through the App Store.

(Credit: Geodesic)

I had the opportunity to use the Mundu IM service on my iPhone 3G and found that it worked quite well. I was able to log in to my instant-messaging services without a problem, and upon doing so, I found that chatting with others through the software was quick and just as simple as chatting with them on my desktop.

But where Mundu IM really shines is in its extras. The service allows you to share pictures taken from your phone with friends, transfer files, and cross-conference with contacts across IM services, making it much simpler to talk with people, regardless of their preferred IM software.

Mundu's design is second to none. It features stylish icons that make it easy to choose your IM service, and the interface during chat was simple, which made the experience far more usable.

(Credit: Geodesic)

Although the software itself is simple and elegant, I'm not quite sold on the implementation. It's nice to have a full-fledged IM service on my iPhone that will help me save money on SMS, but why not make it an iPhone app and offer it on the App Store? Making Mundu Web-based seems a bit odd and takes away from an otherwise fine service, due to Safari's annoying quirks and hiccups, which become frustrating after some time.

When evaluating Mundu's competitive environment, it becomes clear that its IM service takes aim at Agile Messenger, which currently charges customers $44.95 for lifetime use. Based on my findings, the experience is similar, but Mundu IM's $11 one-time fee puts it over the top and makes Agile Messenger less appealing.

(Credit: Geodesic)

It would have been nice if Mundu IM were free, like Meebo, but I understand that Geodesic needs to turn a profit too, and $11 is more than affordable, considering that you'll have your phone for at least two years.

With all the versions Mundu IM offers, it should be noted that "your mileage may vary" depending on the version of the software you use. Although the iPhone version works as advertised, and provides an experience that would make me want to use it on a regular basis, phone differences, mobile-OS quirks, and other considerations become an issue when applying that opinion to all versions of the software.

Because of that, I need to qualify my recommendation when I say that Mundu IM is worth using on the iPhone if you use multiple IM services, and you don't mind accessing them through the Safari browser. But if you only use AIM, I simply don't see a reason to use Mundu IM--access the App Store, and download the AIM app instead. It's free.

With the overall economy slumping, the tech industry is taking its fair share of hits. We'll keep updating the chart below as news of company changes comes in. See our complete coverage of how the tech sector is faring here: Tracking the tech downturn.

Know of a layoff not listed here? Let us know on this form or e-mail us.

See also: The spreadsheet of sunshine: Who's hiring.

(Credit: CNET)

It isn't so much the technology behind Zumobi's free app Ziibii that refreshes RSS on the iPhone and iPod touch as it is its presentation. Ziibii, which means 'river' in Algonquin*, extends the metaphor to depict posts from your various RSS feeds as rafts floating along a stream of information.

Watching posts float by is fun concept--for a few minutes at least--and one that's heightened by the fact that stories, photos, and friends' status updates appear in random order as a round-up of all your RSS subscriptions.

Ziibii's feed flexibility is good, but not great. Twitter, Facebook, Flickr, and YouTube are represented, and you'll also be able to add presets from Ziibii's list of popular sites or add your own favorites. Hopefully soon, Ziibii will make it easy to select more popular sources and aggregators, as does Viigo's thorough RSS reader for other platforms.

Of course, not everyone appreciates this 'blended' view, nor the unconventional current-cum-display. My Type-A fellows can escape to a listed view of feeds and flick in either direction to see more mish-mashed headlines. When you're ready to read up on one feed at a time, the Filter button temporarily hides stories from all but your selected source.

Ziibii earns brownie points for including an in-app browser when you want to read a full article, and for being able to post stories to Twitter or e-mail them to a contact.

With the exception of a small library of feeds, Ziibii is an excellent and creative alternative to your iPhone's RSS reader.

*Fun fact: The 'ssippi' in 'Mississippi' is derived from 'zibi.' The etymology according to Wikipedia: "(cf. Illinois mihsisiipiiwi and Ojibwe misiziibi, "great river," referring to the Mississippi River.)"

BringIt, a company that offers gamers the opportunity to challenge friends and earn prize money, announced Friday that it has launched its open beta to users across the world, allowing them to wager cash on BringIt and challenge others to head-to-head gaming on a selection of console titles.

"Gamers have shown great interest and support for competitive gaming, so we are pleased to offer BringIt as a player-driven service that quickly connects gamers, allowing them to play legally for cash while getting a more intense competitive rush," said BringIt CEO and founder Woody Levin in a statement.

BringIt works with any video game platform with online capabilities supporting head-to-head competition. Once users register for the service, they're required to add some money to their BringIt account through PayPal or a major credit card. Once the funds have been received, they can find other players across the globe and challenge them to a game.

So far, BringIt allows players to challenge each other in Madden NFL 2009, Gears of War 2, FIFA 2009, Halo 3, Guitar Hero 3: Legends of Rock, Rock Band 2, Super Smash Bros Brawl, and Mario Kart, among others. Once users pick a game, they mutually decide how much of their own cash they want to wager and face off against each other online. Scores are then reported back to BringIt, which then sends the funds to the winning party, while keeping a portion of the payout for itself.

BringIt claims that its service is legal because video games are games of skill and its service does not violate any anti-gambling laws across the world. That said, it will be interesting to see if Microsoft, Sony, Nintendo, Electronic Arts, and others take issue with BringIt profiting off their IP.

BringIt is currently in open beta and is scheduled for a full-fledged launch at some point in the next four months.

Google has adopted OAuth, an open Web authentication standard for controlling privacy, for its widget platform, Google Gadgets.

If a user has personal information stored on one Web site, OAuth provides a mechanism for him or her to authorize that Web site to share the data with another Web site or widget. It also makes it possible to do this without the first site having to reveal the user's identity to the second site.

Google announced in June that it was to adopt OAuth for sharing data through its Google Data application programming interface. The company on Tuesday said it will now also use OAuth for Google Gadgets, which are interactive mini applications for the desktop that show, for example, personalized news feeds or localized weather reports.

"We also previously announced that third-party developers can build their own iGoogle gadgets that access the OAuth-enabled APIs for Google applications such as Calendar, Picasa, and Docs," Eric Sachs, Google's senior product manager for security, wrote in a blog post on Tuesday. "In fact, since both the gadget platform and OAuth technology are open standards, we are working to help other companies who run services similar to iGoogle to enhance them with support for these standards."

Sachs added that the new OAuth-enabled gadgets being created for iGoogle would also work on those other sites, including many of the gadgets that Google offers for its own applications. "This provides a platform for some interesting mashups," he wrote.

"It would allow a mutual fund, for example, to provide an iGoogle gadget to their customers that would run on iGoogle, and show the user the value of his or her mutual fund, but without giving Google any unique information about the user, such as a Social Security number or account number," Sachs wrote. "In the future, maybe we will even see industries like banks use standards such as OAuth to allow their customers to authorize utility companies to perform direct debit from the user's bank account without that person having to actually share his or her bank account number with the utility vendor."

David Meyer of ZDNet UK reported from London.

Amazon.com's Web Services division announced Thursday that it wrapped up its second annual Web Services Start-up Challenge and awarded Yieldex, a company that specializes in forecasting online-advertising inventory, with the top prize of $50,000 in cash, $50,000 in Amazon Web Service credits, and an opportunity for an investment offer from Amazon itself.

According to Amazon, it chooses the winner based on "the originality of their idea, marketplace need, and their implementation of Amazon Web Services." Only those companies that use Amazon's infrastructure can enter the company's contest.

Yieldex, which won the challenge after presenting its business model on stage in front of Amazon judges, helps advertisers manage their advertising inventory by forecasting how ads will perform, once deployed to different sites across the Web. The service is similar to those offered by YieldBuild, another company that tries to optimize ad campaigns and revenue.

Amazon's Start-up Challenge wasn't easy to win. It started in early September, with a call for entries, and Yieldex was forced to overcome hundreds of applicants to take the top prize. From the list of applicants, Amazon chose just seven to fly to Amazon headquarters and present their ideas in front of a panel of judges for 10 minutes.

There is currently no word on whether Amazon will invest in Yieldex, but the company did say it is reserving that right.

Remember that little old BlackBerry app for MySpace that premiered last week? Apparently it struck a chord with users because RIM reported just after midnight on Friday (EST), that it hosted more downloads for the product's first week than it has for any other app.

While 400,000 downloads in one week for the BlackBerry-compatible MySpace software is a drop in the bucket compared to Firefox 3's 1 million downloads in 24 hours, it did beat out the initial release of RIM's Facebook app.

RIM did not reply with comparative numbers.

In a statement, RIM's co-CEO Jim Balsillie regards the download count as a proof of "an evolving consumer lifestyle where social connectivity and information access are more important than ever." Yet, the spike could as easily correspond to a more concerted marketing push, to a growing adoption of BlackBerry phones among consumers versus business users, or to first-time BlackBerry owners responding to the sexier looks of the Bold and Storm.

Either way, RIM has a lot of work to do if it wants to join Mozilla in the Guinness Book of World Records.

The new TypePad comments are a lot more attractive than before.

Six Apart's paid, hosted blogging service, TypePad, is getting improved community features. The first thing most users will notice is a new blog commenting system. It has both a cleaner display of comments (with icons for the comments, WordPress-style), as well as a simpler comment entry interface. Users can also reply to particular comments and the system supports one level of threading.

The updated comments service hooks into TypePad's new profile system. Commenters with TypePad IDs get a place that collects all the comments they leave on all TypePad comment-enabled blogs, and users can add feeds from their accounts on Flickr, Twitter, Friendfeed, Digg, and about 45 other services. That makes the profile pages a lot more dynamic and interesting.

The TypePad comment system can be embedded on non-TypePad blogs. The service can automatically install on WordPress.org, Blogger, and Tumblr sites. HTML code is provided to put the comment system on other blogs.

This new comment ecosystem is certainly an improvement over the previous version. But bloggers have other very good commenting systems to choose from. I favor Disqus, for instance. Although I do like the new TypePad system, I don't see a reason to install it on my WordPress blog ProPRTips, (and actually, I couldn't if I wanted to--users of WordPress.com-hosted blogs can't get far enough under the hood to make the switch; bloggers using WordPress.org software hosted elsewhere can, however).

The new system is certainly an improvement, and more than that it's interesting to see Six Apart continue to spin core functionality out of its paid products and offer it to the world for free. Previously, of course, the company made Movable Type open source and free. The company clearly hopes that exposure to these products will make revenue-generating products more attractive. Whatever the motivation, these are serious and full-featured products, now available for nothing, and I'm cool with that.

The new TypePad profiles collect all your commenting activities on TypePad-enabled blogs.