中国总理温家宝日前在金融工作会议上表示，应当加强外汇储备经营管理，积极探索和拓展外汇储备使用渠道和方式。这标志着中国外汇储备管理政策的决定性转变。

今日公布的最新国际报告显示，美国去年劳动生产率增幅落后于欧盟和日本，为十年来最低；中国、印度和东欧等新兴市场国家则依然保持着极高的生产率增速。

欧盟贸易专员和美国贸易代表均表示，各方有可能在近期内达成一个框架协议，并将在本周六达沃斯部长会议上讨论是否重启去年7月暂停的多边谈判。

一项针对欧盟的犯罪调查显示，在欧盟各国首都中，伦敦是居住环境最危险的城市。该调查还显示，伦敦比伊斯坦布尔或纽约更危险。

朝核六方会谈最近取得突破性进展，令中国再次赢得了国际社会的称赞。但中国国际关系专家却有不同看法，其中一些人担心，中国的作用将被弱化。

上海股市周二暴跌9%，并带动全球股市下挫。但令许多中国人不解的是，“黑色星期二”那一天，中国股市发生了什么？为何全球股市也随之下跌？

本周二，中国上证综合指数创下最大单日跌幅，上海各医院收治的心脏病人也因此猛增。但就在次日，中国股市又新增了11.7万个散户账户。一夜致富的诱惑太难抗拒了。

因意识形态之争而搁置一年的《物权法》，预计将在本次中国人大会议上获得通过；而第二项重要立法，将是统一内外资企业税率的法律。

中国总理温家宝在全国人大会议上作政府工作报告时，谈到中国的钢铁、科技、外包、自主创新等问题，展现出中国工业发展的宏伟目标，以及中国所面临的巨大挑战。

中国与伦敦签署了第一份促进双边投资协议，此举巩固了伦敦作为中国资本流入欧洲首选目的地的地位，也为中国企业的全球化发展提供了便利。

普华永道的最新研究显示，到2020年，东京、纽约和洛杉矶仍将是全球最大的城市，但增长最为迅速的城市中，有10个来自于中国，8个来自于印度。

欧洲商会的研究报告显示，尽管去年欧盟的增长率大幅提高，经济改革步伐加快，但其经济影响力仍远不及美国。在2003至2006年间，欧盟与美国之间的发展差距不降反升。

欧盟上周五同意，到2020年，实现温室气体排放量较1990年水平减少20%；并承诺，如果其它国家效仿，就将把排放量减少30%。

德国环境部长呼吁，工业国和发展中国家应彻底放弃外交姿态，就全球气候变化问题进行开诚布公的对话，以期达成持久的解决方案。

外界普遍预期，中共江苏省委书记李源潮很有可能在今年下半年被提升到中共中央政治局，并成为政治局常委。但李源潮在中国两会期间接受英国《金融时报》记者采访时表示：“我关注的是江苏及其发展状况。”

由于以中国为首的一些国家对煤炭和其它大宗商品的需求激增，令澳大利亚港口出现瓶颈问题，有时排队等待进港的煤船已达到创纪录的70艘。

美国互联网安全公司赛门铁克的最新报告显示，在网络聊天室交易被盗银行账户和身份细节的地下经济正在蓬勃发展，许多保密信息在网上可以轻易买到。

今年5月份，美国联邦快递将为中国19个最大的城市提供次日送达限时服务，为200多个城市提供次日和隔日送达服务。美国联合包裹和德国敦豪快递也将在中国发展国内快递网络。

欧洲飞机制造商空客昨日将A350宽体客机部分设计和生产工作外包给俄罗斯联合飞机公司。空客希望此类协议能鼓励俄、中航空公司购买欧洲飞机。

用照相手机读取条形码，并连接到相关互联网内容，是移动通信业的宿愿。日本移动运营商DoCoMo已支持这种技术，而诺基亚已开始在一些手机上预先加载所需软件。

中国任命对商界友好的习近平担任中共上海市委书记。此前，习近平在经济繁荣的浙江省担任省委书记。在他任内，浙江省巩固了作为中国民营经济推动力的地位。

吴苹和她的丈夫与开发商对峙近三年，被网友赋予了“史上最牛钉子户”的称号。如何解决本案，将是对中国新通过的《物权法》的一次考验。

马来西亚总理最近宣布了多项激励措施，鼓励外资到柔佛州的依斯干达投资。他认为，依斯干达经济特区将对新加坡发挥出像中国深圳对香港同样的作用。

美国21世纪资本市场监委会联合主席戴利与卡尔弗豪斯：以前，美国资本市场无疑是全球“宠儿”；如今，企业却可能去伦敦或香港上市。

The Yahoo Mail news is coming thick and fast this week. Yesterday they announced that Yahoo Mail now has free unlimited email storage space, and today Yahoo has announced an API for Yahoo Mail. Earlier today I spoke with Chad Dickerson, Head of Yahoo! Developer Network, and John Kremer, VP Yahoo! Mail, to find out more. 

The Yahoo! Mail Web Service is, in technical terms, a SOAP web service that allows developers to connect to and utilize the Yahoo Mail platform and data. It was previewed to Yahoo! Hack Day attendees last September. There are restrictions on its use. But basically for premium Yahoo Mail users, the API allows access to perform typical mailbox tasks such as list messages and folders, compose and send messages. For free users, developers can build mail preview tools with limited Web Service functionality. 

The high level nutshell is that third party developers can, using the the API, build mail tools or applications on the same platform that Yahoo uses to serve 249 million Yahoo! Mail users. Which opens up the potential for a huge user base, if you manage to create a popular mashup using the mail API.

An early example is a mashup of Yahoo! Mail and Flickr (screenshot to the left). It won "Best Mail Hack" at September"s Hack Day. Check out this screencast for an explanation of how this was put together using the API. The mashup lets you send a Flickr postcard, via Y! Mail.

In our discussion, Chad also mentioned a search app that allows more sophisticated search of your mail. You could also create an email backup application, as another example. There are more 3rd party apps in the Yahoo Gallery for Mail and Yahoo is of course hoping 3rd party developers will contribute others.

Here"s a screencast which explains more about the API, which is useful especially for developers wanting to try this out.

Note that Yahoo is also providing commissions for third party developers, so they can earn money off their creations. Specifically, Yahoo! Mail provides a commission of $10.00 for every new Yahoo! Mail Plus account referred by developers. They"ve also teamed up with Commission Junction to provide third-party tracking, real-time reporting and monthly commission checks.

All up, this is another great example of a big Internet company "opening up" their platform and (to some extent) their data, to enable more creative mashups and new apps to be built on top of it. Yahoo is certainly doing more than both Google and Microsoft in this respect.

Flickr postcard, via the Yahoo Mail API

全球股市今年首季融资1719亿美元，达创纪录水平，不过，这其中IPO筹资额反而有所下降。有迹象显示，新股上市受到近期股市动荡的影响。

在美国决定对中国铜版纸征收反补贴税后，中国造纸企业谴责美方的做法是不公正而且没有依据的。与此同时，分析人士担心，众多中国行业可能很容易受到华盛顿新贸易战略的影响。

在美国2008年总统大选即将到来之际，投资者挑战企业界对其政治支出秘而不宣的传统，要求公司改善有关政治支出的信息披露。

Slashdot is running a story stating that Morfik, an Ajax development platform we covered recently on Read/WriteWeb, has filed a patent dated September 2005 for the compiling of high-level languages into AJAX apps. The timing of the news is interesting, because Morfik is just about to release its version 1.0 - after 8 or more years of development.

To remind you of what Morfik is. Morfik allows developers to use high-level programming languages (which give the developer more power - e.g. BASIC, C#, Pascal) to create web apps. It does this by converting apps from high level language INTO Ajax code. The Slashdot story states that Morfik has actually patented this technology, as of September 2005. According to Slashdot the patent covers virtually any high-level language, including "Ada, C, C++, C#, COBOL, ColdFusion, Common Lisp, Delphi, Fortran, Java, Object Pascal, SmallTalk, Visual Basic, and Visual Basic.NET".

It seems that Google and its Google Web Toolkit is the primary target of the patent, because Google (more than any other big Internet company) relies heavily on Ajax apps.

This rumor of a Morfik vs Google battle has surfaced before. In fact I covered it back in May 30th, 2006 on my ZDNet blog (which is now run by Alan Graham, hence his pic is on the story). The story from May "06 started:

"A couple of weeks ago Google released its Google Web Toolkit (GWT) and almost immediately there were rumors of an alliance between Google and Morfik, the Web OS vendor which has a Javascript converter as one of its main products. The reason? GWT bore more than a casual resemblance to Morfik."

My post in May "06 went on to note that Morfik had a patent pending on their Ajax compiler and that Morfik had issued a press release in defence of it.

While the rumors of a Morfik-Google alliance were eventually scuttled and the press release came to little, it"s clear that Morfik and Google is in some kind of protracted battle - or negotiation - about the Ajax compiler technology. There has also been talk that Morfik is under NDA with Google - about what, I don"t know.

It may be that Morfik ends up being acquired by Google, or at least licenses the Morfik technology to Google. Or perhaps Google will battle Morfik in the courts instead. It is an interesting story to follow, no matter what the eventual outcome...

A Morfik prototype of a desktop version of Gmail, which has the ability to check email offline.

The big news today is that EMI Music announced a new higher quality DRM-free music download offering. It is a premium service, covering EMI"s entire digital catalogue, and will enable full interoperability of digital music across all devices and platforms. Steve Jobs of Apple was there at the announcement, to emphasize that iTunes supports the move towards DRM-free - indeed it is the first real sign that Jobs" call in February for record companies to abolish DRM, was more than just PR bluster. Apple iTunes will be the first online music store to receive EMI"s new premium downloads, offering EMI music "at twice the sound quality of existing downloads" and with their DRM removed, at a price of $1.29/€1.29/£0.99. Complete albums from EMI Music artists purchased on the iTunes Store will automatically be sold at the higher sound quality and DRM-free, with no change in the price. Further details are in the EMI press release and the Apple press release.

Apple"s Stranglehold on Digital Music

So what does this news mean for the Online Music industry? Well firstly it emphasizes the stranglehold that Apple has over the online/digital music market. You have to hand it to Steve Jobs, his February open letter to record companies can now be seen as a masterstroke of strategy - positioning Apple as "the good guys" in the digital music industry and giving EMI Music a golden opportunity to take the DRM-free initiative, with Apple holding its hand. It"s win-win of course for both companies - Apple reinforces its dominance and gets DRM-free music, while EMI (which had been publicly struggling to compete with the other big record companies) gets to be seen as a leader in the digital music business.

As Techcrunch reported from the webcast: "Jobs says they are trying to do similar deals with other labels, and expects that 50% of all of their tracks sold will be DRM free by end of year." So Apple has gotten the first domino to fall (EMI) and others will surely follow.

Steve: "Mua ha ha!"
EMI guy: "Does this mean I"m cool now?"
Steve: "Not in that pink shirt..."

Interoperability

Also the fact that the music is no longer tied to the device is significant. From the webcast: "These songs will no longer be tied to iTunes and the iPod - any device that plays AAC format will play these songs."

While this may seem like a concession from Apple, in reality iPod/iTunes is so dominant (85% of the market last time I checked) that this will have minimal downward impact on Apple"s sales. In fact because Apple is aligning itself so closely with DRM-free and EMI"s news, and they are the first vendor to implement it, their sales might go up! And long-term, people will still flock to use iPods and iTunes - just as people still flock to use Windows PCs.

Prices going up

The other thing this augers for online/digital music is that prices are about to go up - and "quality" is the excuse for this. Apple is going to offer EMI"s DRM-free music at twice the quality on iTunes, but at 30c per song more. While it"s interesting that EMI/Apple decided to offer album downloads at the same price, in reality this is no different to a retailer offering you a bulk discount (buy 10 songs for the price of 7, etc).

The End of DRM? Nearly...

Is it the end of DRM? Well not quite... as it"s noted near the end of the EMI press release:

"EMI Music will continue to employ DRM as appropriate to enable innovative digital models such as subscription services (where users pay a monthly fee for unlimited access to music), super-distribution (allowing fans to share music with their friends) and time-limited downloads (such as those offered by ad-supported services)."

So DRM is still being seen as a competitive tool. But this move by EMI and Apple is a great first step for DRM-free music from big record companies. EMI was struggling, so really they were pushed into it (with a helping shove from Apple), but it"s a brave move nonetheless.

中国国务院总理温家宝昨日呼吁日本首相安倍晋三及其他日本领导人，不要再去参拜颇具争议的、供奉着日本战争死难者灵位的靖国神社。此举表明中国政府将继续把外交重点放在阻止日本领导人参拜靖国神社上。

香港中信1616公司为中国各电信运营商提供国际互连服务。该公司能够兼容不同技术标准和通信协议，去年处理12亿条从中国发往海外的手机短信。

英国精神病学研究院产前精神病学专家韦罗妮卡•奥基恩指出，孕期抑郁比产后抑郁更常见，它是导致早产、婴儿夭折和严重儿童疾病的一个因素。

The New York Times reported this morning that DoubleClick plans to launch an exchange for online advertisements. The system is described as follows:

"DoubleClick, based in New York, views the exchange as the centerpiece of a growth plan and may derive the majority of revenue from the new service within five years, said David Rosenblatt, the company’s chief executive, said in an interview yesterday. “We already have the largest sellers and the largest buyers,” he said. “This will link them for the first time.”

He described the exchange as a mix of eBay and Sabre, the airline reservations system that travel agents use. The service will let advertisers see information about what competitors bid for particular ads, in the same way that eBay shows visitors past bids. And it will let publishers try to ensure that they sell their ad spots at the highest possible price, the way that airlines try to do with the seats they sell."

DoubleClick was reportedly in serious talks with Microsoft about being acquired and later it was rumored that Google also became interested. According to the New York Times, the announcement of the exchange "may make DoubleClick a more attractive acquisition target, according to advertising industry executives."

The fact that DoubleClick would choose to go public with these plans right now, certainly validates the interest in advertising exchanges from both publishers and advertisers. Therefore, I thought it would be an interesting time to step back and look at the market landscape for advertising exchanges.

Difference Between Ad Networks and Ad Exchanges

One important note of clarification, an ad network is simply a 3rd party that websites partner with to serve ads on their site in return for part of the revenue generated. There are literally dozens of large ad networks, including Google"s AdSense, Yahoo! Publisher Network, and AOL"s Advertising.com network. Typically, an ad network takes care of unsold inventory for larger sites, or all inventory on smaller sites that can"t be sold by a direct salesforce.

On the other hand, an advertising exchange is a marketplace that attempts to optimally match sellers (publishers" available inventory) and buyers (advertisers" desired campaigns). In many cases, some of the buyers include ad networks. For example, in the DoubleClick exchange, Advertising.com will be one of the initial groups testing the system.

The Other Major Advertising Exchange

The most significant player in the advertising exchange space is New York based Right Media. In October of 2006, they closed a $45 million round that was lead by Yahoo (Read/WriteWeb Coverage). They were also recently profiled by Business Week. Especially interesting in the context of today"s announcement was the following quote:

"Right Media helps match display advertisers with Web-site publishers, and it hopes to do for display ads what Google has done for search ads. It"s an idea Walrath [CEO of Right Media] began exploring while working as director of direct marketing and senior vice-president of strategy and development at DoubleClick, the maker of online-advertising and media-management tools."

Could we be heading towards another Google and Yahoo showdown, if Google ends up acquiring DoubleClick? I"ve also read speculation that Google will be releasing their own ad server, setting up the possibility of a Google, Yahoo and Microsoft competition if Microsoft were to buy DoubleClick.

Other Players

Other competitors are admittedly blurring the lines between advertising network and exchange. For example, Adify is a solution that allows publishers to work with the Adify network or pull in ads from another 3rd party ad network (if the revenue associated with the ad is not greater than a value specified). While certainly less automated than the exchanges, this does empower publishers to work with multiple sources of advertisements to maximize the value of their inventory.

Conclusion

While search results are a relatively small percentage of overall web traffic, it is traffic that is very easily monetized via search engine advertising. There are lots of companies trying "to do for display ads what Google has done for search ads" (ref BusinessWeek article above.) The exchange approach certainly is a promising part of the overall solution. As DoubleClick"s exchange launches and competes with Right Media and other online advertising solutions, it will be interesting to see if this approach leads to more profitable monetization of display ads.

By the end of this week, the Thunderbird 2.0 Release Candidate will be launched. Thunderbird is Mozilla"s open source desktop email client, similar to Microsoft Outlook in features. However with the 2.0 release, Thunderbird takes on more Web functionality from the Firefox browser (more on that below). Thunderbird is cross-platform and it works on Mac, Linux, Windows - including support for Vista in 2.0. It was originally released Spring 2003 and now has just under 10 million users.

The 2.0 Release Candidate will be the final "test" version before the full public launch of Thunderbird 2.0 by end of April. I spoke to Scott MacGregor, Lead Thunderbird Engineer, about the 2.0 version and what new features it has.

The 2.0 version of Thunderbird signals the first major upgrade since v1.5 was released in January 2006. There are a number of new Web features in 2.0, which is why we"re covering it here on Read/WriteWeb. The main changes from 1.5 to 2.0 are message tagging (similar to Web tagging, as in del.icio.us or Flickr), new webmail integration with Gmail and Apple .mac, folder views and message alerts.

New Features

Scott said that Thunderbird"s main goal is to address information overload for users. To that end, 2.0 has beefed up security and there are more customization options (i.e. add-ons, as with Firefox). It has also introduced the following email organization improvements:

• Message tagging and improved search
• Advanced folder views
• Message alerts
• Integration with Gmail and .Mac

Image: piratis

The tagging works similar to Gmail"s labels, meaning you can tag each email with any number of keywords.

The Advanced Folder Views enable you to just display your favorite folders -with a toggle UI for easy management. For example you could choose to see only folders with unread messages.

The Message History Navigation is a concept taken from the browser - there are now "back" and "forward" buttons to view the history of an email. In relation to this, I asked Scott if there is a conversation view for email threads - as in Gmail, where incoming emails are added to previous emails in the same conversation (rather than a new email displaying each time someone replies). Scott said no, but they do have a threaded view.

Message Alerts is also new - meaning that every time a mail arrives in your inbox, an alert displays (if selected). I asked if this could be filtered - e.g. say I only want to get an alert when one of the R/WW authors emails me? Scott said that while you can"t filter at that level, you can filter alerts via the usual email filters (i.e. by making certain emails skip the inbox).

The upgraded search allows you to "find as you type" - another concept taken from Firefox. With Thunderbird 2, you can search across accounts (inbox, rss feeds, news etc). Also you can save your searches.

Thunderbird 2 has web mail integration (i.e. account setup support) for Gmail and .mac. Support for other Web Mail services is coming soon. The Web Mail integration probably could be taken further, because all it really does right now is improve the account setup wizard. But it does lessen the need to fiddle with POP settings, SMTP steps etc - so it"s a welcome addition.

Add-ons

Probably the most interesting aspect of Thunderbird 2, from a Web technology point of view, is its customization features. As with Firefox, Thunderbird is an open source, flexible platform - allowing developers to create add-ons that extend its functionality. There are currently hundreds of add-ons, including contact managers, VOIP calling, and networking tools. The most popular, according to Scott, are Lightening (bringing calendar into mail), Plaxo (syncs address book, similar to Plaxo for Outlook), and enigmail (encryption).

I asked Scott for an example of an add-on idea that would specifically leverage the new 2.0 features. Scott suggested an add-on to sync tag stores with other apps (e.g. from Flickr into thunderbird, and vice versa). Sounds like an excellent idea, so somebody please "make it so!" :-)

Scott also mentioned there are lots of add-ons that work across both Thunderbird and Firefox - e.g. FoxyTunes, a music add-on.

Conclusion

After my Gmail connectivity woes a week ago, and in the absence of offline functionality in Gmail, I"m pretty keen to get a desktop archive set up for Gmail. I had been using Outlook, but I"m now going to test out Thunderbird 2 - with its new Web features (tags, improved search, add-ons, etc).

If you are already a loyal Thunderbird user, please comment below on what you most like about it.

世界银行在最新报告《危机十年后》中指出，改善投资环境，消除贫困，防范新的危机，是东亚经济面临的三大挑战，不解决这三大问题，东亚就无法进入富裕国家之列。

G7财长下周末将出席国际货币基金组织春季会议，但德国财长施泰将缺席。德国财政部一位发言人称，此次财长度假早已安排，事涉对家人的承诺，重新安排不易。

In a move predicted by R/WW"s Sean Ammirati and The New York Times a week or so ago, one of the big Internet companies has acquired online advertising system DoubleClick. And the buyer is none other than Web 2.0"s big spender, Google! According to the press release just out:

"The acquisition will combine DoubleClick"s expertise in ad management technology for media buyers and sellers with Google"s leading advertising platform and publisher monetization services.

The combination of Google and DoubleClick will offer superior tools for targeting, serving and analyzing online ads of all types, significantly benefiting customers and consumers..."

This is a huge deal - because for DoubleClick, Google is paying nearly twice the amount it paid for YouTube late last year ($1.65B in that case).

The deal appears to have been hastened by DoubleClick"s announcement earlier this month that it plans to launch an exchange for online advertisements. Sean analyzed this development on 4 April, noting that it may lead to more profitable monetization of online ads. As if Google isn"t profitable enough already in that department! One thing"s for sure, this is a blow to Microsoft - whose AdCenter product was designed as a direct competitor to Google"s Adsense/AdWords. But now Google has - yet again - trumped the competition (Microsoft and Yahoo) by taking its online advertising technology into new territory.

中国总理温家宝上周在东京的公园里打太极拳、与日本大学生打棒球、登门造访日本农民，以个人外交拉开了对日本融冰之旅的序幕。

Today at the 2007 National Association of Broadcasters conference (NAB2007), Microsoft and Adobe have gone tit for tat with product launches that directly target one another. Our previous post covered Adobe"s launch of a new Internet video solution, that competes with Microsoft"s Windows Media Player. And Microsoft has fired right back, unveiling Microsoft Silverlight - a re-branding of their WPF/E technology (Windows Presentation Foundation Everywhere). In its announcement, Microsoft describes Silverlight as a cross-browser, cross-platform plug-in for delivering media and rich interactive applications (RIAs) for the Web. So basically it is Microsoft"s equivalent to Adobe"s Flash.

Also, as is usual when Microsoft launches a new media product these days, they have brought on board a number of high profile partners. In this case they include Akamai Technologies Inc., Brightcove Inc., Eyeblaster Inc., Limelight Networks, Major League Baseball and Netflix Inc.

More details on Tim Sneath"s Microsoft blog. Ryan Stewart also has a good write-up, noting that "Silverlight finally gives Microsoft an easy web video solution."

What are we to make of the sudden increase in Microsoft vs Adobe competition? The world of RIAs is increasing in importance, as Internet users seek out better "experiences" - both in the browser and outside it, and both online and offline. While Google is happy to utilize Ajax in the browser as its RIA weapon of choice, Microsoft and Adobe are busy battling it out in the "richer" products - which either extend the browser or utilize the desktop.

Today Adobe announced the launch of the Adobe Media Player, a desktop app that enables consumers to view high quality video whether they are online or offline. It is also designed for content owners to distribute, track and monetize their video. Built on their Apollo framework, the Adobe Media Player is cross-platform and based on open standards. The Adobe Media Player leverages other Adobe tools such as the Adobe Flash Player, Adobe Flash CS3 Professional, Adobe Flash Media Server 2, and the Adobe Media Encoder. For the end user, the video player can be used to create media channels via RSS, as well as for video downloads and streaming. Adobe is previewing the player at the National Association of Broadcasters trade show today and it will be available in the Fall of 2007.

More importantly from Adobe’s strategic plan, this is an attempt from Adobe to feed the ecosystem around Apollo and make end users more comfortable and knowledgeable about Apollo’s capabilities. Their path to success relies on developing and encouraging the development of compelling applications that add value to the average consumer. Additionally, this offering adds tremendous value to content owners - through various tools which include:

Analytics

Adobe gives content owners advanced tools to learn more about the ways that end users consume their media. It is all permission based via cookies, but I think Adobe is counting on a majority of the people enabling this feature. Most probably won’t be aware of the implications of enabling the cookies. The key innovation here is that it will track the media consumption both online and offline.

Content protection

Adobe offers streaming encryption, content integrity and identity based protection. This will make content publishers happy, because they"ll have innovative tools that will allow them to build a legitimate business and not feel that their content is stolen. This is great for the small video producers of the world, who don"t want to spend a lot of money protecting their content.

More enhanced montetization

Adobe gives content owners more flexible options over advertising and monetizing the media. Adobe Media Player heavily leverages RSS - content owners can feed ads via RSS and overlay ads or branding in many different ways. In seeing a demo, I saw a couple of ads that appeared. I was surprised at how non-intrusive they were and how it didn’t disturb the flow of my video experience.

Customization

One of the cool things I was able to see was a great deal of skins and customization that gave publishers an opportunity to really enhance their brand equity. Going from channel to channel, the level of detail and difference between the channels was impressive.

Conclusion

Adobe is getting into the Desktop Media Player business, which means they are competing with Microsoft"s Windows Media Player directly. It is also a major opportunity for Adobe to feed the Apollo ecosystem and show people the limitations of traditional desktop software.

中国及77个发展中国家挑战安理会讨论气候变化的权力，称安理会在气候变化上没有专业特长，不具代表性，并且为最富裕国家不公正议程所左右。

中华电信已经实行一项提前退休计划，并全力改善资本结构。但对董事长贺陈旦而言，要把公司私有化，他尚面临着员工对重组的抵触、政府干涉等难题。

中国是全球增长最快的汽车市场，未来10年内有望超越美国成最大市场。为此，各汽车制造商借上海车展之机，纷纷展示新款替代燃料汽车，以期夺得先机。

2005年英国逾60%回收金属用于出口，21%出口至中国，22%出口至印度。业内人士称，中国是全球废金属需求猛涨背后的关键因素。

Adobe Systems announced last night that they will be open sourcing their Adobe Flex framework so developers can access their source code to enhance its ability to create Rich Internet applications. The Flex SDK and docs will be available through the Mozilla Public License. Adobe Flex, initially released in 2004 by Macromedia, and available since 2006 as a free SDK from Adobe, is a set of technologies to support the development of RIAs, web apps with the features and functionality that mimic traditional desktop applications.

By open sourcing the technology, Adobe is realizing the potential of embracing the developer community. By providing open tools they are helping to foster a developer environment that can result in the creation of cool features and functionality and further developer the framework to suit developer needs. Other open source projects from Adobe include the contribution of source code for ActionScript Virtual Machine to the Mozilla Foundation and the open source WebKit engine in the Apollo project.

"The definition and evolution of Flex has been influenced by our incredibly talented developer community from day one," said David Mendels, senior vice president, Enterprise and Developer Business Unit at Adobe in a press release. "The decision to open source Flex was a completely natural next step. I am incredibly excited to deeply collaborate with the developer community on Flex, and further fuel its momentum and innovation."

With their latest open source release, developers are able to download and contribute to source code for the Flex compiler, components, and application framework. What is not included in the release is Flex Builder and Flex Data Services. Flash itself will also remain closed. Because some companies may not want to use the open source framework, Adobe still offers its commercial licenses with variable terms. I suspect that not many will opt for the paid license route, however. Adobe Systems has set up internal processes to ensure that security and stability remain core elements of Flex, knowing that any security breaches could be disastrous.

In the end, what this means that Adobe is further feeding the Apollo ecosystem to support applications and developers in creating and deploying Rich Internet apps that will benefit the end user. They have a $100 million venture arm to support the development of Apollo applications and with the Adobe Media Player. Going open source is a way to galvanize support within the developer community, though it remains to be seen what kind of uptake and flexibility it will actually provide. Adobe is certainly going "all in" with its software. Often times, big corporations will aim to emulate the openness and idealism of the new Internet economy, but fall short in the execution.

In terms of a timeline for its release, Adobe projects a pre-released version of their Flex product "Moxie," posting daily software builds of the Flex SDK for public download and we should expect the full open source Flex to be released during the second half of this year. The source code for the framework itself is already available in the Flex 2.0 SDK.

The announcement last night of iGoogle (the new name for Google Personalized Homepage), Gadget Maker and other localization features, shows that Google is ramping up its personalization efforts once again. Google Blogoscoped has excellent coverage from the Google Personalization Workshop, held yesterday at Mountain View for a select group of local bloggers. In this post we analyze these new features and compare them to Google"s competition in both search and personalized homepages.

As Read/WriteWeb noted in February and in our recent interview with Google"s Matt Cutts, Google has been experimenting with personalization a lot this year. In regards to its personalized homepage, Google has always had far more gadgets available on its platform than live.com, Netvibes or Pageflakes. Currently there are over 25,000 different Google gadgets that you can put on your iGoogle page. Also according to Jessica Ewing at yesterday"s event, product manager of the Google Personalized Homepage program, iGoogle was the fastest growing product at Google in 2006. iGoogle will now be available in 40 countries and 26 languages.

Here is some useful background to Google"s personalization efforts, from the Google Blogoscoped post:

"Why does Google invest in a “personal Google” now? Sep [Kamvar, from Google] says it’s because of recent trends in content on the web, and recent technological advances in search algorithms. He suggests that Google wants to compute PageRank for every single person, so to speak. Sep explains that Google thinks of personalization in 3 parts:

• Search Your own stuff (like Google Desktop Search, Web History)
• Traditional (Pull) Search
• Push Search (like recommendations, iGoogle/ personalized homepage)"

So Google is obviously pushing ahead with personalization on multiple fronts. If you recall, Read/WriteWeb ran a poll at the beginning of this year asking which "Search 2.0" approaches stand the best chance to beat Google? There were 635 respondants to that poll, and Personalized Search was the most popular result. So Google"s current focus on personalization shows they have no intention of allowing alternative search engines to get too far ahead in personalized search!

One important thing to note is that Google goes out of its way to ensure that the user is still "in charge" of the personalization experience, no doubt to keep the privacy hounds at bay. Apart from needing to be logged into your Google Account, Google also makes personalization optional - including giving the user the ability to pause the Web History feature or remove specific items from the history. Users can also export their Web History as an RSS feed, which is important given that the ability to export one"s data has long been a key issue for "open Web" advocates.

Gadget Maker and Enhanced Localization

The new Gadget Maker product makes it very easy to create a new gadget, by "filling out a simple form". There are 7 templates available (quoting again from Google Blogoscoped):

• A Photo gadget (share a series of photos with others)
• GoogleGram gadget (allowing you to display a new greeting message to someone for every day for 7 days)
• Daily Me gadget (which will show what you’re currently doing, as well as quotes, what’s on your mind etc.)
• Personalized Countdown gadget
• A Personalized List (you can e.g. publish your own top ten list with this, Google says)
• YouTube video favorites gadget (pictured above, this gadget will let you create a YouTube channel to share)
• A “Free Form” gadget (an “all-purpose gadget that lets you meld text and image in any way,” Google says)

Example Gadget Maker form

Also launched yesterday was location-based personalized search results and a “My Community” service for the iGoogle directory. Both of these features integrate localization into search or directory results.

Conclusion

Google seems to be fighting a two-pronged battle with their personalization efforts - one is to keep themselves ahead of the alt search engine pack, and the other is to one-up Yahoo, Microsoft, Netvibes and the other personalized start page contenders. On both counts, it is great to see Google putting in so much (visible) effort. Although I still think Google has much to do in terms of innovation in search personalization - take a look at Collarity or Hakia as just two examples of alt search engines with innovative personalization approaches. But the Google Account (which is where much of this personalization in Google products is coming from) and the new iGoogle features show that Google is pushing forward in search innovation - certainly they are not resting on their considerable laurels!

As for the personalized homepages, the smaller companies like Netvibes and Pageflakes are the leaders in innovation (IMHO). But all of the Big 3 have defining features that differentiate them - Google has many gadgets (including Gmail and GTalk) and nice theme options, Yahoo has excellent usability for mainstream users, and Microsoft has some promising gadgets too. Also note that iGoogle gives Google a great platform to integrate more with Google Desktop - enabling users to have gadgets running over both platforms (Web and desktop) and utilize things like My Community on the desktop. This will concern Microsoft in particular. So all up, Google is in a strong position with iGoogle and gadgets in general.

What do you think of Google"s personalization push, so far?

Yahoo! is set to announce that it will close its online photosharing website Yahoo! Photos in favor of Flickr, the web 2.0 darling that it purchased two years ago. According to web metrics firm Hitwise, Yahoo! Photos is currently the number 2 photo website on the web, behind Photobucket, which has seized 40% of the market on the back of strong usage among MySpace visitors. Over 50% of Photobucket"s traffic comes from MySpace, compared to around 3% for Yahoo! Photos.

Flickr, meanwhile, has gained on Yahoo!"s main photo property, jumping from the #6 photo website last year, to the #3 position today. According to Charlene Li of Forrester Research, the move is a no-brainer.

Because Flickr has tools that allow users to embed metadata -- tags, EXIF info, etc. -- directly into photos, Flickr images tend to be easier for photo search engines to index, says Li. Yahoo! had no choice but to make this move, she told USA Today.

Yahoo! plans to move users off of the Photos property over the next three months, but will be taking an unorthodox approach and not forching people to Flickr. Users will be given the option of exporting their images to other sites, including competitors Shutterfly, Kodak Gallery, Snapfish and Photobucket. Exporting to Flickr will be a one-click process, according to Yahoo!

Flickr generally offers most of the tools that Yahoo! Photos offers. One area in which Yahoo! currently trumps Flickr, however, is prints. While Flickr has started to offer some printed products, such as photo cards via a partnership with Moo, Yahoo! Photos offers a full range of photo prints via the mail and for in store pick-up at Target department stores. I would guess that this might be an important feature for many users, especially since Yahoo! Photos generally caters to an older audience, which Yahoo! will need to move over to Flickr.

It is interesting to note that comScore reports a different story on traffic to photo websites than does Hitwise. According to March comScore data, Yahoo! Photos and Flickr both trump Photobucket for worldwide traffic and in the US, Flickr just overtook Yahoo! Photos for the first time. Together, they would by far equate to the largest photo website by traffic.

Conclusion

So what does this all mean? At one time, Yahoo! Photos was the place to share photos online, and it still hosts many more photos than Flickr (about 2 billion versus 500 million), but Yahoo!"s homegrown property was never able to match the buzz that Flickr created. Flickr has soared among a younger demographic, and merging the two competing properties was inevitable. Everyone expected it when Yahoo! bought Flickr in March 2005 (the way we all expect del.icio.us to eventually kill off MyWeb), it was just a matter of which site would eat the other.

This appears to be the famed "Peanut Butter Manifesto" in action as Yahoo! consolidates some of its redundant services (in fact, Brad Garlinghouse, SVP of Yahoo! and author of the memo, told Rafe Needleman last night he was "eating his own peanut butter"). But, Bill Tancer of Hitwise expects that Yahoo! will lose some users in the switch. What do you think?

Written by Jay Fortner and edited by Richard MacManus

In a big move for Web Office vendor Zimbra, Comcast has teamed up with Zimbra, Plaxo, and HP to announce the SmartZone Communication Hub - a tightly integrated web-based communication app that will merge email, voicemail, IM, and an address book. Comcast is the second largest ISP provider in the US, after AT&T and larger than AOL. It is also one of the largest providers of cable television, entertainment, and digital communications in the U.S. So this a big coup for Zimbra and Plaxo (more on that below). As for HP, they will be assisting in integrating the data, voice, and video services on the SmartZone platform.

SmartZone homepage

Comcast will provide this new web based application at no charge for their customers, through Comcast.net. It is scheduled to be released towards the end of this year. This is part of the new generation of Comcast’s consumer triple play (voice, data, and video) services. For Zimbra, it is their largest partnership to date.

The feature set of the SmartZone Communication Hub will include the ability to:

• Listen to voice mail online and forward messages via e-mail - including the ability to listen to your voicemail within an email, without launching a new program
• View, save, and print call history
• Merge contacts via an address book that syncs with multiple devices
• Send video or traditional instant messages to friends or contacts
• Add customization, including RSS and the ability to layer in video clips
• Apply safety and security controls utilizing Bizanga’s email anti-abuse system, Cloudmark’s email anti-spam and anti-phishing tools and Trend Micro’s anti-virus software

SmartZone Voicemail

What it means for Zimbra and Plaxo

Zimbra, a leader in the open source messaging and collaboration space, recently announced the Zimbra Desktop along with a milestone of 6 million paid mailboxes. In this deal with Comcast, Zimbra provides the email and voicemail communications platform. Plaxo, the web-based address book used by over 15 million users, will be powering the address book for the SmartZone Communication Hub. Here"s what both Zimbra and Plaxo get out of it:

• Proof of concept
• Both can leverage this partnership to work with other bigcos
• First-mover advantage for this type of platform
• Substantially larger reach
• Revenue (terms of deal not yet disclosed)

What it means for Web Office

After a recent Forrester Research report that executives are wary of using enterprise Web 2.0 start-ups, this may be a shot in the arm for companies like Zimbra. The benefit of using the likes of Zimbra or Plaxo is that they are nimble and so they can quickly provide value added tools for bigcos like Comcast - enabling customized software integrations, amongst other things. Unless Microsoft implements skunk works solutions for web-based office integrations, I think this partnership announcement could be the first of many Web 2.0 integrations in the near future for consumer or enterprise-facing applications.

The Comcast deal suggests that web companies that provide best of breed applications can have a viable business model, by partnering and licensing their apps to bigcos - who can then make their own custom office app suites. The Comcast deal also means that more mainstream consumers will be exposed to the web 2.0 solutions of Zimbra and Plaxo.

If there is one remaining issue, it lies in getting executives more comfortable in leveraging the innovation created by these enterprise web 2.0 start-ups - which the Forrester report clearly showed isn"t happening fast enough.

在中美本月下旬开始第二轮中美战略经济对话之前，美财长保尔森发表讲话称，中国与全球货币市场的融合程度低，“无法长期持续”。

NewsGator announces user base milestones; Newsgator is something of a quiet revolution these days. It isn"t announcing flashy features like Google Reader or Yahoo Pipes, but today it announced that more than one million people use NewsGator’s consumer RSS solutions, and its RSS platform is accessed over 10 million times per day by users of NewsGator’s desktop client products. The company also remarked that NewsGator has archived more than 1.5 billion articles from RSS feeds in NewsGator Online. Newsgator has always been known for the range of products it has, but I hadn"t realized it includes a browser toolbar, desktop notifier and a screen saver!

Sun to announce Flash, Silverlight competitor; According to InfoWorld, today at the JavaOne conference in San Francisco, "Sun will roll out a Java-based product family called JavaFX, which covers Java development from the desktop to the Web to mobile devices." It"s going to be a competitor to the recent Microsoft Silverlight, although at this point Sun appears to be positioning it mainly as an alternative to AJAX. Ryan Stewart has more details.

RSS web feeds for tags at Amazon.com; Ian McAllister from Amazon notes that Amazon"s Customer Communities team just rolled out tag-based RSS feeds. This has long been a pet topic on Read/WriteWeb, so I will be looking into it later today. The Help page on Amazon.com has more details for now. Suggested use cases include widgets and mashups, plus the RSS tags include support for affiliates.

ThinkFree launches Docs, other enhancements; there"s been a lot of action in the Web Office space of late, with the Comcast and ShareOffice offerings which we"ve covered this week. Established Web Office suite vendor ThinkFree seems to be heading in a very "social networking" direction, with the announcement of ThinkFree Docs - which is described as being "all about finding and sharing your docs with the broader community of ThinkFree users." The company refers to it as "the Flickr of Office docs". See R/WW"s earlier coverage of ThinkFree Docs a month ago. ThinkFree has also increased sharing capabilities within ThinkFree Online - including more control over how others interact with documents you share, and the ability to post your docs to blog sites. The ThinkFree blog has more details about their focus on social networking.

Social network Facebook is set to launch a classified service to its users on Friday, according to the New York Times. The service will be free, though Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg told the Times that the classifieds, which will launch under the name "Facebook Marketplace," might someday provide a source of revenue for the company.

Users will be able to create classifieds in four categories: housing, jobs, for sale, and other. Ads can be restricted by network or friends list, and can be broadcast to a user"s "news feed" -- which is a Twitter-like stream of information about the actions of a user"s friends.

On May 7th, online classified website Oodle launched a sponsored group on Facebook to offer classified ads to Facebook users. It"s unclear whether Oodle will power the Facebook Marketplace, but since the Oodle group offers ads in eight categories, it appears that it is a separate offering. Further, Oodle"s Facebook group looks like it uses the standad Facebook API, and still brings people off-site to place an ad. It seems unlikely that Facebook would want to send users off their web site to post ads in their official classifieds section.

It will also be interesting to see how this new section affects their partnership with Jobster. The Facebook Career Center, which is powered by Jobster, has over 17,000 members, and their partners page touts Jobster as the "exclusive career destination on Facebook." Separately, Facebook Marketplace could spell doom for the college-targeted classifieds site DormItem.

Conclusion

The Marketplace means that Facebook, which has rebuffed a billion dollar take over offer from Yahoo!, is serious about diversifying its revenue stream, even though it will be a free service for now. Social networks are ripe for ecommerce. An Ameican Marketing Association survey last November indicated that social networking sites could make a killing by offering shopping services over the holiday season. 51% of those surveyed said they would use social networks to find deals or download coupons, and some 29% said they would consider shopping directly on a social networking site. There is a large piece of the $211.4 billion/year online shopping pie that social sites like Facebook could potentially be dippig into.

That said, the blog Trendspotting recently reported that social networks do not have much influence over people"s buying decisions. But though MySpace has offered classifieds for years, shopping is not something that social networking sites have generally pushed in the past. If Facebook is successful in rolling out their Marketplace, those purchasing influence numbers may go up.

Yahoo! announced two initiatives today to become, in their words, the "go-to resource for all topics green." That"s green as in, environmentally friendly. The first is a competition called Be a Better Planet to find the most eco-friendly city in America. The prize? Carbon credits and a fleet of hybrid taxis. Participants can also earn free compact fluorescent light bulbs for themselves.

More notably, Yahoo! is launching Yahoo! Green, a climate change information portal that includes news, information, and guides to help people cut their carbon emissions and do other things to become more "green."

One of the niftiest features of the site is the Take Action page, which allows users to create their own carbon cutting plan. Users can drag and drop CO2-lowering actions onto their plan -- things like "Change the porch-light to a compact fluorescent" or "Install low-flow shower heads" -- and instantly get a report about how many tons of carbon they"ll cut at a result.

Yahoo! is actually putting its money where its mouth it, pledging last month to become carbon neutral by the end of 2007 -- no small feat for an 11,000 employee company. While we"re in the carbon-cutting mood, since it"s been said that a black web page consumes less energy than a white one, perhaps a redesign of Yahoo! in order? Doubtful, but though some cynics question the motives behind big companies pledging to go green, affecting positive environmental change will likely do nothing but good.

Last May CBS launched Innertube, an online video site that would allow the network"s viewers to watch popular television shows like "CSI" and "Survivor" online for free, as well as bonus content and original mini shows. The site, which was ad supported and used RealPlayer, was ill-conceived from the start since it was put to head-to-head with arguably more attractive offers from CBS (99-cent commercial free downloads of Survivor, and free, sans-commercials on-demand content for Comcast cable subscribers). Eventually CBS also offered content for download on iTunes and clips via YouTube, leaving Innertube in the dust.

But now, CBS has decided that forcing users to come to them just doesn"t work, reports the Wall Street Journal. Beginning this month CBS will start to distribute their popular content over ten different online destinations, including AOL and Joost, as part of a new initiative called the CBS Interactive Audience Network. The company is also reportedly working on deals with web 2.0 sites like Facebook, Last.fm -- which recently announced it was adding video, and Slide to distribute their video content over social networks.

Online gossip blog, Jossip reported yesterday that CBS will acquire Wall Street humor blog WallStrip for a sum of $5 million. While that seems like a lot of money, part of the deal, according to Jossip, is that WallStrip host Lindsay Campbell will become the face of CBS" web video initiative, not unlike what Amanda Congdon, of Rocketboom fame, does for ABC. Fred Wilson, who has invested in WallStrip, won"t comment on the legitimacy of the Jossip report. (And it might be important to note that it looks like WallStrip already has a distribution deal with ABC.)

According to the WSJ article CBS lags far behind the other four American television networks in terms of online video audience, and adding a well-known and well-liked video blog fontman (or in this case, woman) certainly couldn"t hurt. Though, $5 million does seem like a lot just to hire the services of a moderately popular blogger (WallStrip has 4474 Feedburner subscribers today).

英国央行行长默文•金表示，央行行长卸任后有责任不对经济问题发表评论，此话显然是冲着美联储前主席格林斯潘卸任后多次公开发言而来。

Google"s mission statement has long been "to organize the world"s information and make it universally accessible and useful." Last night, Yahoo! announced their new mission, "to connect people to their passions, communities, and the world’s knowledge." While Google emphasizes the data, Yahoo! will emphasize the people (the Google also recently debuted a new tagline: "Search, Ads and Apps," so maybe they"re more about the money).

Last November, an internal memo at Yahoo! from SVP Brad Garlinghouse, dubbed the "Peanut Butter Manifesto" by the press, called on the company "to boldly and definitively declare what we are and what we are not." It seems that Yahoo! has decided that they"re less about search, and more about community.

As part of the new realignment Yahoo! formed a new "Network Division," that puts "the majority of Yahoo!’s consumer-facing products," including Mail, Messenger, Groups, Bix, Flickr, Web Search, Answers, News & Information and Entertainment business units, the Yahoo.com home page and My Yahoo, under one roof. That appears to be pretty much everything.

One of the most interesting points in Yahoo!"s new vision is that they want to "leverage our assets to build the most relevant, comprehensive, dynamic, and open repository of knowledge and content on the Web." Yahoo"s Executive Vice President, Jeff Weiner, who penned the announcement, emphasized that Yahoo! is excited about opening up their content to other web publishers. This is something that Yahoo! has already excelled at. The Yahoo! Developer Network offers comprehensive APIs for most of their services, and according to ProgrammableWeb, Yahoo! offers more APIs than Google, and is second among the large web properties in terms of mashups created using their technology and content.

"One of the things we’re most excited about is the concept of "open," and all of the potential we have yet to tap by opening up some of the most trafficked pages on Yahoo.com to the highest quality publishers on the Web, regardless of their size," says Weiner, promising more information soon. It will be interesting to see in what new ways Yahoo! plans to open their content.

Weiner says the reorganization of Yahoo! is complete, and indeed many of the things Garlinghouse called for in the "Peanut Butter Manifesto" have been done (despite Terry Semel"s claim that the reorganization of Yahoo "wasn"t all about peanut butter"). Some redundancies still exist in the Yahoo! network (Del.icio.us vs. MyWeb comes to mind), but the company appears to have endeavored to remove the major redundancies that pitted business units against one another. Google will continue to dominate in search for the foreseeable future, but will focusing on people be enough to get Yahoo! back on track? Leave your thoughts in the comments below.

Amazon announced today that they will begin selling DRM-free MP3 music downloads from over 12,000 labels, the largest being EMI. EMI, of course, was the first major record label to sell music without DRM via Apple"s iTunes store earlier this month.

"Our MP3-only strategy means all the music that customers buy on Amazon is always DRM-free and plays on any device," said Jeff Bezos, Amazon.com founder and CEO in a press release. "We"re excited to have EMI joining us in this effort and look forward to offering our customers MP3s from amazing artists like Coldplay, Norah Jones and Joss Stone."

Here"s a quick time line of the slow death of Digital Rights Management for downloadable music over the past couple of years:

• Jul 19 2006 - Yahoo! and Sony BMG team up to sell DRM-free downloads of Jessica Simpson"s single "A Public Affair." (Yahoo! has already been pushing for an end to DRM for awhile.)
• Sep 19 2006 - Yahoo! continues its DRM-free experiment by offering for download Jesse McCartney"s new album in unencumbered MP3 format via a deal with Hollywood Records.
• Oct 04 2006 - Amie Street, a music store that sells DRM-free downloads using community-driving prices, launches.
• Dec 06 2006 - Yahoo! offers DRM-free tracks from a couple of artists: Reliant K and Norah Jones (the first of EMI"s DRM-free downloads?).
• Dec 13 2006 - Despite not having contracts with any major labels, eMusic continues to show that DRM-free music resonates with consumers, announcing its 100 millionth download. eMusic is the second-largest digital music store next to Apple"s iTunes.
• Dec 14 2006 - Bill Gates tells a group of bloggers that DRM has "huge problems" and "causes too much pain for legitimate buyers."
• Dec 18 2006 - The RIAA, on behalf of six major labels, including EMI, sue Russian website AllOfMP3.com for $1.65 trillion. The site doesn"t comply, and remains very popular (a top 2,500 site on Alexa today).
• Feb 07 2007 - Steve Jobs posts his thoughts on music on the Apple Hot News page, in which he calls for the music industry to abolish DRM saying, "DRMs haven’t worked, and may never work, to halt music piracy."
• Feb 28 2007 - Universal Music France tests DRM-free music with the album "L"Olympia" by Emilie Simon, a French musician.
• Mar 06 2007 - Amie.st signs the Barenaked Ladies, its first major artist. The tracks are listened to more than 14,000 times in the first 24 hours.
• Mar 13 2007 - The European Union"s Commissioner for Consumer Protection slams DRM (specifically Apple"s): "Something must change."
• Apr 02 2007 - Apple announces the sale of DRM free songs from the entire EMI catalog starting in May. The cost of no DRM is an extra US$0.30. Apple hopes that by year"s end 50% of the music it sells is sans-DRM.
• May 01 2007 - Digg users revolt and take over the site because of a DRM encryption key (yes, it had to do with HD DVDs and not music, but it is still relevant).
• May 05 2007 - HBO proposes that consumers really just have a problem with the name "Digital Rights Management," and suggests a change to the friendlier "Digital Consumer Enablement." This really has nothing to do with the rest of this time line, but it"s amusing in an absurdly Orwellian way.
• May 16 2007 - Amazon signs 12,000 labels, including EMI, to sell DRM-free downloads.

Amazon"s announcement is another huge step forward for consumers who clearly want DRM-free downloads. But with only one major record lable firmly behind the idea so far, we are still a long way from a completely DRM-free future. What are your thoughts on Amazon"s announcement?

非洲开发银行行长透露，中国打算未来3年向非洲提供约200亿美元基础设施与贸易融资。相比之下，包括多边开发机构在内，传统捐赠方承诺援助总额约为70亿美元。

Stanford University, the birth place of Yahoo! and Google, has come up with a lucrative way to deal with DMCA complaints from the MPAA and RIAA against its students: terminate their Internet service and charge a reconnection fee. First time offenders will be charged $100, a second offense will cost $500, and a third DMCA means paying $1000 and signing a letter idemnifying the school.

The school claims they get so many complaints that it takes three full time employees to sort through them all, and the fees will help pay for those resources. Schools fingered by the RIAA and MPAA as top havens of piracy have taken divergent approaches toward dealing with the problem. Some have banned P2P traffic outright, some have simply ignored the complaints from the industry associations, and others, like the University of Wisconsin-Madison, are demanding a formal subpoena before handing over any student information. But Stanford might be the only school that has tried to turn a profit out of it.

The RIAA has been more aggressive at targetting students for copyright infringement. Sending "pre-litigation" settlement notices to students, which threaten lawsuits and offer a settlement for a nominal fee (usually around $3000). Some have pointed out that these settlements are generally small enough that it is not worth it for students to go to court. Some people, however, suspect that US and international courts will soon find that the IP gathering and monitoring techniques used by the RIAA in order to get information about users to send out its "pre-litigation" notices are not legal.

Getting back to Stanford, the text of their policy says that piracy on their network has reached "unacceptable levels," before mentioning that the MPAA recently named the school as one of "Americaís top 25 worst offenders" in terms of piracy. The announcement from Stanford goes on to say that dealing with DMCA notices "is an irresponsible waste of Stanfordís resources." That seems to imply that the DMCA and PR campaigns by the recording and motion picture associations are having the effect of causing ISPs to expend resources they don"t want to. And some, like Stanford, will pass those costs onto consumers. Do you think it is fair for ISPs (including educational institutions that offer Internet access) to do that?

On Monday, the US Department of Defense announced that a number of social networking and media sites would be blocked on its network, citing bandwidth concerns. "This is a bandwidth and network management issue. We’ve got to have the networks open to do our mission. They have to be reliable, timely and secure," a US Strategic Command spokeswoman told Stars & Stripes. (Marshall Kirkpatrick has a good blog post summing up the reaction across the blogosphere.)

For their part, YouTube isn"t accepting the ban without a fight. Today, YouTube told the Associated Press they would challenge the US Defense Department"s decision. "Watching or uploading online video does use bandwidth and can slow or tie up a network, but [CEO Chad] Hurley expressed doubt that soldiers" use of YouTube could have any real effect on the military"s massive network," reported the AP.

Hurley joked that since the Defense Department invented the Internet, bandwidth shouldn"t be a problem. But he vowed to work with the military to figure out how to keep YouTube available to American soldiers. Hurley, and CTO Steve Chen seemed to believe that content was more likely the issue behind the ban. They said YouTube policies about violence already mean they remove most graphic videos being uploaded from Iraq and Afghanistan, but they would be willing to hear what sort of controls the Pentagon would require to keep the site up.

"We want to protect the [YouTube] community from being exposed to something violent, but at the same time, we want to educate people on what"s happening around the world," Hurley said. "It"s hard for us."

Even more baffling to YouTube was the apparent contradiction by the Pentagon, who a couple of weeks ago launched their "boots-on-the-ground" YouTube channel in order to present its own combat videos. In light of this, YouTube was "especially puzzled" by the block, said the AP.

What do you think about the US military"s ban on YouTube, MySpace, Hi5, and other social networking and media sites? Do you think YouTube has a chance of getting the block lifted?

Yesterday, a lot of people thought Microsoft had missed out on 24/7 Real Media, a display ad network that was purchased by communications group WPP for $649 million, just a month after DoubleClick reportedly passed on Microsoft to accept a $3.1 billion acquisition from Google. Always a bridesmaid, never a bride, was the sentiment. But today, Microsoft announced the purchase of aQuantive, a 10-year-old, publicly traded digital marketing company in an all cash deal worth approximately $6 billion -- the biggest acquisition in Microsoft history.

The acquisition has continued a hot month of consolidation across ad networks. Starting with Google"s acquisition of Doubleclick for $3.1B on April 13. Yahoo! spent $680M to purchase Right Media on April 30 and AOL acquired a controlling stake of German ad-serving company ADTECH AG on Wednesday, before WPP"s purchase of 24/7 yesterday, and Microsoft"s move today. Mike Arrington has more on today"s announcement as well as good notes from the conference call. Anyone who wants to listen to a recording of the call, dial 800-774-9248 (international: 402-220-0372).

So who is aQuantive? The Seattle-based company owns Avenue A | Razorfish, Atlas and DRIVEpm, which Microsoft calls "one of the industry’s most successful families of digital marketing service and technology companies." The company was originally founded in 1997 as Avenue A, and went public in 2000 under that name. It became aQuantive in 2003.

In a press release, Microsoft"s CEO Steve Ballmer said that the acquisition "represents the next step in the evolution of our ad network from our initial investment in MSN, to the broader Microsoft network including Xbox Live, Windows Live and Office Live, and now to the full capacity of the Internet. Microsoft is intensely committed to creating a thriving advertising business and to partnering closely with all key constituencies in this industry to help maximize the digital advertising opportunity for all."

One of the most interesting parts of the conference call came when Microsoft was asked whether this purchase would affect their view of the Google/DoubleClick acquisition, which they have criticized as a violation of anti-trust laws. Microsoft said no, Google"s acquisition will hurt competition since they are already such a major player in the businesses DoubleClick operates, whereas Microsoft does not operate in any of the areas aQuantive does, they say. The company does expect antitrust review in the United States, however.

What do you think of Microsoft"s mega acquisition? What does it mean for the advertising market at large? Will it be enough to set Microsoft"s advertising sales business on track to take on Google? Were Yahoo! and AOL just left in the dust?

The BBC reports that EMI Group has agreed to be bought by private equity firm Terra Firma for £3.2bn including debt, which is around US$6.3B. The deal isn"t confirmed yet, because it is subject to shareholder approval. As BBC noted, EMI"s sales have been in decline of late - the company reported a £260m loss in the past year. But interesting to note that EMI chairman John Gildersleeve listed EMI"s digital and online strategy as a major reason to sell, because the cash injection will "accelerate the development of its digital and online strategy to fully exploit this long-term growth opportunity".

You"ll recall that EMI announced a compelling DRM-free offering in early April, a move backed by Apple. I have met a few EMI people at past Web 2.0 conferences and I know they have a great deal of interest in web-enabling their music catalog. So EMI"s moves in the digital and online arenas are positive. However I should also note that Coldplay"s latest CD, X&Y, has been the only CD I haven"t been able to put into my iTunes collection recently! And Coldplay are one of EMI"s biggest acts (under their Capitol Records label). So there"s still room for improvement ;-)

In any case, let"s hope EMI"s digital drive continues under their new owners. As yet there is little sign of the other big record companies offering DRM-free music, so EMI has been a leader alongside Apple on that front - and for that reason, I"d hate to see them go under.

According to an article in the Wall Street Journal today, social networking site Facebook will announce later this week that it is opening inward (my term, not theirs) and allowing "other companies [to] provide their services on special pages within its popular Web site."

"For instance, an online retailer could build a service in Facebook to let people recommend music or books to their friends, based on the relationships they"ve already established on the site. Or a media company could let groups of users share news articles with each other on a page inside Facebook."

To me that doesn"t sound too much different than the currently available Facebook API, which has already been used to launch services within the Facebook network (perhaps with Facebook"s approval for the more tightly integrated ones), such as Oodle"s Facebook classifieds. But according to Steve O"Hear, this move seems to indicate Facebook moving in the direction of becoming a platform.

Acting as a platform is something MySpace already does, to an extent, though their user data is still mostly off limits. They also often have a tenuous relationship with the companies that feed their ecosystem. Could the rumor about Facebook widgets that WIRED spread last month be related to this? There will be a large contingent of Facebook users hoping that the answer to that question is no. Among many core users, Facebook is looked at as the "anti-MySpace" and any move perceived as a shift toward "MySpacification" is met with skepticism and opposition.

When Facebook announced its intention to open up its network to those outside of universities last fall, Facebook users protested on site rather vocally. Tens of thousands of users joined a Facebook group opposing the move. But it has paid off for Facebook. Facebook"s marketshare was up 106% from September 2006-April 2007, according to Hitwise. "Opening up to the entire Internet audience had a positive effect for Facebook" said LeeAnn Prescott, director of research at Hitwise. "Clickstream data indicate that users at other social networking sites may be experimenting with Facebook as an alternative site, which may help it attain critical mass among non-collegiate users."

And there"s no doubt how successful widgets have been in helping to push MySpace to the top. At the end of last year, Newsweek even declared 2007 to be the "Year of the Widget." Facebook is in a precarious position with their core users, who are very set and their ways and resistant toward change that would bring Facebook closer to the look and feel of other social networks. At the same time, they may want a piece of the action. Of course, this could just be a more expanded API. And in fact, that seems more likely.

The WSJ article points out that Facebook has no plans to share revenue with companies that develop services to piggyback on the site. As Steve O"Hear points out, that could present its own problems. Facebook needs to find a balance, he says, and build out their platform in a way that benefits all involved parties.

What do you think of Facebook opening up to more outside services?

Last week Amazon clamped down on Zlio and told the service that they could no longer promote Amazon products in the United States. Amazon informed the site of the decision with a generic email and so far Zlio has been unable to find out the reason behind it. Zlio President and CEO Jeremie Berrebi informed users this morning via an email. (Techcrunch Forums