Loopt and Buddy Beacon: Tracking people

Loopt and Buddy Beacon are two mobile services that allow you to locate your friends and family and allow them to locate you. This can be a really good thing for many people, especially young adults. At football games or concert events, it would be really nice to be able to find your friends if you get separated; however, these services could also cause problems with friends or family, specifically parents or significant others becoming too invasive. You can block people with these programs, but that in itself is what would cause the problems. I think it is more helpful than harmful though. Maybe it is something that should only be used when necessary in a crowded or unfamiliar place and not on a daily basis.

Facebook Value

Companies such as Microsoft and Google are interested in investing in the social networking site Facebook. While this is still in the early stages, Microsoft is reportedly considering investing $300 to $500 million for a 5% stake of Facebook. Facebook is seeking a minimum value of $10 billion, and there has been enough interest to go as high as $13 billion from investors. Facebook's only annual revenue is from newly established advertising relationships. Facebook continues to grow and add features making it more desirable to investors. How long until a more popular social networking site takes over or at least provides competition? I think Facebook will remain popular for a while because everyone is on it. It's difficult to get people to leave for another site when they have already developed profiles, photo albums, and have many friends on the site they are already on.

Blu-Ray a Mistake

A recent blog stated that Blu-Ray should have never existed stating "if a product requires substantial support from the parent to keep it alive, including funding levels that probably can't be reasonably recouped, it has a very high likelihood of failing." Blu-Ray was tied in with the PS3, and it is believed that this relationship lead to the downfall of the PS3 because it wasn't affordable. Blu-ray became impractical due to the price and does not provide sufficient competitive advantages. Of all the new technologies coming out and the frenzy they create. I think it's interesting to find technologies like the Blu-ray that just aren't worth the extra money for the advancement in technology.

iPhone Hacker

A 17 year-old named George Hotz was able to unlock the iPhone so it can be used with other cellular networks besides AT&T. In doing this, he received a new car, 3 iPhones and a paid consulting job. It took him 500 hours, which was well worth the time. Most people spend much more time than that finding a job because they have to, and they don't receive gifts and fame along with it. I think it is quite possible that we will hear about Hotz sometime in the near future as a technology mogul.

Yahoo and Viacom

Yahoo, the most-visited U.S. website, made an exclusive deal with Viacom to sell search-linked advertising on sites like VH1.com, Nickelodeon.com and 31 other websites. Yahoo will be using its Panama advertising program to pitch the ads and will help market Viacom's websites by offering advertisers a way to target users. This agreement will allow Yahoo to provide a broader range of websites to clients. This will help with their competition with Google. Yahoo and Viacom will share revenue from text links that appear next to search results, articles, and pictures on Viacom's sites. This is a really big deal for Yahoo.

EMI and iTunes

EMI Group said it will begin selling songs online that are free of copy-protection technology through Apple's iTunes Store., but the deal does not include music from The Beatles. The unprotected songs will be sold for $1.29 and are of higher quality than the $.99 songs. Consumers are willing to pay more for music that they will be able to use on any device. EMI is still working on getting The Beatles catalog. Online music sales are expected to increase with the introduction of this deal into the market.

YouTube Awards

YouTube created its first awards voted for by fans for one week. Winners include OK Go for most creative video and Ask a Ninja for best series, which beat out the well-known Lonelygirl15. YouTube is making celebrities out of these ordinary people who put videos on their site. OK Go's video was played on television stations such as MTV and VH1, but through YouTube the video was seen by tons more people and was accredited with the best video award when on television they owe their fame to their music. I think it is extremely interesting and exciting that the internet is creating stars through the choice of the popular public.