iPhone + Webkit + Digg = Mobile Digging Done Right

Webkit browsers, which the iphone uses will now be able to digg while mobile.

Delta Tang Bravo has more details on their blog:

“”

We just launched a special version of Digg today intended to be browsed on an iPhone. It’s available at digg.com/iphone but you’ve got to either be on an iPhone, in Webkit, or possibly on a Webkit-enabled device like some of the fancy Nokia phones.

It’s really fun to be developing for the iPhone. First off, it’s a welcome change to be developing for a single rendering engine… and a decent one at that. Plus, you’ve got the run of all of Webkit’s features, including advanced pseudo-selectors, text-overflow ellipsis, and simple rounded corners in CSS. While I do enjoy making bulletproof designs in my normal web design, there’s also some freedom in not having to consider text-resizing, extreme page resizing (you need to support 2 dimensions), and other hurdles when you’re developing for the iPhone. Of course, we’re still following standards pretty strictly, but not having to cope with the lowest common denominator (or even any rendering discrepancy) certainly makes things interesting — and fun!

Even more fun is developing specifically for the user input quirks of the iPhone. When your primary input device is a honkin’ fat finger, it changes the way you think about links and buttons. Everything’s got to be bigger… way bigger. The yellow digg box and Digg It button are about twice as large on the iPhone as on the normal website. I also made the clickable area of the Digg It button even larger than the button itself so if you click on the edge of it, you’ll still get a press. You also have to make sure buttons aren’t too close together so that you don’t mash one when you intend to hit the other.

Joe (the Digg dev who coded the project) and I started from Joe Hewitt’s excellent proof of concept and then adapted the javascript and the rest of the code. We’re using jQuery (thanks to the jQuery team for their assistance) to render the sliding effects to mimic a ‘real’ iPhone application’s functionality.

Joe and I threw this together over the weekend with Kevin’s help storyboarding it. Good times were had. I’m really looking forward to messing around more with developing specifically for the iPhone. Fun fun fun. Can you tell I think it’s fun?

UPDATE: One thing I forgot to mention is that page loading takes a long time on an iPhone. Actually sending and receiving a request over At&T’s slow network (when you’re not on wifi) is especially slow. So, we’re actually doing one larger load to bring in both the story list and the contents of the stories. Then you’ve only got one request (and we made sure it wasn’t huge) and you can browse the 10 stories on the page without loading again.

Update 2: Also see Joe’s write-up on some of the technical aspects of the Digg iPhone version
“”

.TV Premium Sales Top $500k in Day 1, ME.tv Launches

Demand Media, Inc., the next-generation web media company, and its wholly owned subsidiary and largest wholesale registrar, eNom , announced today .TV domain names sold in the first 24 hours of availability, totaled in approximately $500,000 in sales, not including those pending payment. The premium TLDs were released to market late Monday afternoon after a five-month hiatus, and are available at www.domainsindemand.tv.

Examples of premium domains that were sold in the first day of availability include:

bands.tv
bridal.tv
earth.tv
fitness.tv
history.tv
Malibu.tv
punk.tv
realtor.tv
skateboards.tv
weekend.tv
yearbook.tv

The release of premium names on May 1st was timed in conjunction with the introduction of www.me.tv, the first integrated suite of proprietary social media tools that allows anyone to own, program, and share their own personal video-centric website with social networking features and content completely controlled by them. These tools are provided free with the purchase of a .TV domain name purchased through www.me.tv or through an eNom reseller.

WICKED Wordpress Theme Generator - My New Favorite Tool

Yvo Schaap has created a WICKED Wordpress Theme Generator - literally allowing you to create a new WP theme on the fly.

If you’re like me…and short on time and dont want to mess with CSS - this would be a great tool to use if you pump out several wordpress sites over a weekend.

The Wordpress Theme Generator lets users create their own custom themes and layouts for Body Size, Sidebars, Menu and overall presentation; then download the files in Zip format for easy upload to their Wordpress blog.

Realtime features allow you to see what you’re making as you build it.

check it out

Apple 2Q Profits Jump 88 Percent, Exceeding Analysts’ Forecasts

Apple Inc. blew past Wall Street expectations Wednesday, posting quarterly profits that jumped by 88 percent, fueled by strong sales of its iPod players and Macintosh computers.

In the first three months of the year, the Cupertino-based company said it earned $770 million, or 87 cents per share, up from $410 million, or 47 cents per share, in the year-ago period.

Sales were $5.26 billion, up 21 percent from $4.36 billion last year.

Analysts, on average, were looking for earnings of 64 cents per share on sales of $5.17 billion, according to a poll by Thomson Financial.

Apple said it shipped 1.5 million Macintosh computers and more than 10.5 million iPods during the quarter, representing a 36 percent growth in Macs and 24 percent growth in the music players.

“We are very pleased to report the most profitable March quarter in Apple’s history,” said Peter Oppenheimer, Apple’s chief financial officer.

The company said it expects revenue of about $5.1 billion and earnings per share of about 66 cents in the current quarter, which is the third in Apple’s fiscal year. Apple’s projections are actually lower than the forecasts Wall Street had before Wednesday.

Shares of Apple closed at $95.35, up $2.11, or about 2 percent, on the Nasdaq Stock Market, then leaped to $102.73 in after-hours trading.

At Wednesday’s closing price, the shares have gained about 11 percent this year, boosted partly by anticipation over Apple’s iPhone, the cellphone-iPod combination due to be released in June. Investors have largely remain unfazed by Apple’s stock options troubles, with industry analysts widely predicting Steve Jobs’ position at Apple will remain intact.

But legal experts say Jobs is still in legal limbo: An investigation by federal prosecutors continues and new accusations emerged Tuesday from the company’s former chief financial officer, alleging Jobs may have had a more significant role in the backdating of options than previously stated.

The new allegations came on the same day the former CFO, Fred Anderson, immediately settled his case with the Securities and Exchange Commission, which filed backdating-related civil charges against Anderson and Apple’s former general counsel Nancy Heinen. The SEC did not charge any other individuals in the lawsuit and said it did not plan to pursue further action against Apple itself.

Apple’s board of directors, which includes former vice president Al Gore and Google Inc.’s CEO Eric Schmidt, issued a statement Wednesday saying it would not enter a public debate with Anderson. It also defended the conclusion of Apple’s internal probe last year that cleared Jobs and current management of any wrongdoing.

Robert Scobble: “Ebay is about to announce a gadget that you can put on your blog and consumers can buy products - but not leave your site”

Robert Scobble - “I study how people outside of ‘us’ find people and things”

It’s a Google World:
Podcasters aren’t optimizing their content for Search Engine Optimization - and they are leaving traffic on the table.

Aggregate of the traffic is what gets you found. “Google is worth understanding” - How do people find you? When someone searches for “funny videos” - you’ll want to be found. “If you’re not thinking about how you rank on Google - you’re missing a ton of new business.”

It’s a People World and Word of Mouth World:
Robert thinks that we need to not ignore the word of mouth traffic - remember that, especially with Youtube, AskaNinja, Twitter, etc.
When he reads his feed reader - things that make him slow down are keywords, interesting photos, or “authoritative” people. These are the things that makes his eye stop and actually read the content.

It’s a Distribution World:
If you want to care about the apple tv - you need to care about the format, higher resolutions work better and will drive more traffic. It takes twice the time to code - and the bandwidth can be spendy, but you need to listen to what your readers or listeners care are the formats that they use.
Joost is starting a sister site that uses a “mashed P2P network that is far cheaper than today” - this will allow for the lower level Vbloggers to bring their content to the masses.

Getting bloggers to talk about you is exponential - it will bring in a ton of traffic!
“At Podtech we built a player that allows users to put content on their own site - which allows users to consume content without going outside of your site, and traffic trippled in 1 week.”

Nice little Tidbit of news:
“Ebay is about to announce a gadget that you can put on your blog and consumers can buy products - but not leave your site” — Look out AuctionAds!

Marshall Kirkpatrick - Getting access to information early in the conversation

Marshall Kirkpatrick Speaking at the PodCastHotel in San Francisco - Live Blog Post!

Getting access to information early in the conversation-
Timeliness - reporting on information as early in the news as possible. This is key to building the media properties that has built. SplashCast has been on digg several times, and that’s because of the timeliness of the content and news that is being broken.
Splashcast being dugg on the front page drive between 3,000 to 15,000 uniques to their site. Scribbed.com has had 9 front page diggs in the last month and this is due to timely PDFs that they have provided.

Twitter “is good for community rather than breaking news”. The earthquake story has been one of Marshall’s favorite stories related to Twitter.

Production time for podcasting or video is enormous - and that slows down the amount of speed that you have to break a story. The biggest changes in video blogging will be quickness to bring content online. Using Twitter or other live event notification tools can be used in conjunction with video blogging to let others know that a new story is being broken, needs digging, etc.

YouStream style live video - where it is an end-to-end model is the best that we have, and others will be moving towards this.
Free Speech Radio News uses several different podcasters to provide news - this is a great way to get a lot of content from many sources, quickly.

Reaching out to low-bandwidth and less tech-savy users is really the key for growth in podcasting and video blogging - bringing the un-tapped crowed into the “know” about these type of technologies.

Mini Cologne - has a program in San Francisco that teaches minorities to record and promote pod casts - this one of Marshall’s favorite examples of others reaching into the un-tapped crowed.

PodcastHotel Speakers on Saturday

Today’s events at the podcasthotel are some interesting ones that you won’t want to miss. This is probably the highlight of the day for anyone that wants to tune into the live feed!

1:30 p.m. – 2:15 p.m.
The State of Vlogging: What’s new?
How is the community evolving? How can artists get into vlogging as a way to promote themselves and their work? We will address how enabling technologies have changed the way we view and create video content online; are broader audiences ready? Will there be increased demand as with online video sites? How will this impact news distribution in the future?

Moderator:
Eddie Codel, PodTech and Geek Entertainment TV

Speakers:
Adriana Gascoigne, bub.blicio.us
Schlomo Rabinowitz, Vloggercon/CNET
Justin Kan, Justin.tv
Josh Wolf, The Revolution will Be Televised

I’m Heading to San Fran For the PodCastHotel Event

I’ll be heading down to San Francisco this weekend to attend the PodCastHotel event, and I’m really excited about this one!

The Podcast Hotel is a conference that is going to allow people to get together to hear people speak but also to create their own works, learn a ton, discuss issues and exchange ideas. The Keynote speaker is Andrew Baron, Founder, Rocketboom, which has become of of the most successful video podcasts in the world. I’m looking foward to hearing him speak!

A few of the speakers are:
Chris Pirillo, Founder, Lockergnome
Mary Hodder, chief executive officer, Dabble
Josh Wolf, The Revolution will Be Televised
Robert Scoble, Vice President, Media Development, Podtech

This should be an awesome event, and I’ll post some notes from the speakers over this weekend!

ScanScout Backed By $2 Million In Funding; Launching Tool That Monitors Video Topics For Advertisers

ScanScout, a Cambridge, MA-based startup that has developed a tool that lets online video publishers target the topic of a video, has received $2 million in angel investments, according to Mass High Tech. One of the participants in this first funding round was angel investor Ron Conway, who said he generally invests about $50K in tech companies, but decided to invest $150K in ScanScout, citing growing demand for online video and its ability to attract advertising.

Two former MIT classmates, ScanScout’s president Waikit Lau and CTO Steven Lee, developed the technology, which launches publicly next month. ScanScout monitors the content’s spoken text, audio and images and then select related advertisements that run just below the video screen.

Iminent Brings Video-add-ons to Instant Messaging

Iminent, startup based in France provides video-add-on applications for instant messaging systems. Do you remember the old days of IRC or ICQ? Well, imagine those on steroids! Iminent has secured nearly $4 million from French-Italian investment group 360 Partners, AC reports. Iminent’s video system, which is currently in beta test mode, allows users to make short videos and attach them to IM when chatting. IMer’s can use “emovids,” which is a short animation that is intended to serve the same function as an emoticon. The company’s website says that the application is free, though it offer any other details about how it is to be marketed.

Russia’s Yandex Acquires Biz Social Networking Site

Yandex, the Russian portal and WiFi network operator, has acquired Moikrug.ru, which claims to be the country’s largest social networking site for professionals. This is much like Linkedin, but in the Russian business space. Moikrug roughly translates to MyCircle.
Regular and active a:c euro reader Yakov Sadchikov, co- founder of Russia-based search company Quintura, uses the term ‘acq-hired’ to describe the deal, suggesting the know-how and experience of the team at Moikrug was the attraction. Moikrug is said to have some 100k registered users.
No disclosure on price but rumors range from $1.5M to up to $5M including cash and Yandex stock options.

Read the full story - Yandex buys social network MoiKrug.ru

Bebo Launches Music Download Service and Bebo Mobile

Finally it’s here, Bebo Mobile was entangled in negotiations with carrier O2, and apparently those deals have fallen through and on Wednesday Bebo will announce that it has partnered with Orange to offer a version on cellphones.

Due to the site’s popularity in the UK, Bebo Mobile will go live there this summer, with expansion to other markets later in 2007. The feature set is vaguely similar to MySpace Mobile: you can edit your Bebo profile, update your blog and add friends from your phone. Presumably you’ll also be able to access Bebo Mail, the internal messaging feature.

In addition to the mobile service, Bebo is also launching a direct competing service to myspace music. Called Bebo Bands. You will be able to sell your songs, if you are a band, through a small widget that can be placed on any site and is built by 7digital.

The inclusion of the widget in Bebo will be huge for them, adding sales from Bebo’s 450,000 registered bands, and enabling them to sell to Bebo’s supposed 31 million users. Bebo Bands will be able to create a Starter indiestore account, which will allow them to sell four tracks, or a Pro account, which supports 20 tracks.

MobilePlay’s eXpress it!

MobilePlay - Another CTIA announcement. MobilePlay, which puts blogs and news sites on your phone, has launched eXpress It!, a mobile social network. Users make “mini sites” to share with others. This is one very cool site! I’m going to sign up for an account tonight.

Drum Roll Please: YouTube Video Award Winners

Drum Roll…….YouTube named its first ever Video Award winners Monday.

On top of the list is the Chicago band OK Go for their music video featuring treadmill choreography. You have probably seen this video on MTV and other music award shows, the popularity of this YouTube Video is just amazing. That video, which was seen by 13 million YouYube users took the best creative prize, though in the actual best music video category, voters chose LA-based singer-songwriter TerraNaomi. Users had a week to vote on a dedicated section within YouTube.

Other top winners include:
> Best Series: Ask a Ninja
> Best Comedy: Smosh
> Best Commentary: The Winekone
> Most Inspirational: Free Hugs Campaign
> Most Adorable Video: Kiwi

This is a pretty cool way that Video has changed the internet - I guess you could call it ” CoolSiteOfTheDay 2.0 “

I am Watching Justin.TV Right Now

Ok, so I’ll admit it, Im addicted now. I spent probably 1.5 hours of my life today watching what Justin is watching on Justin.TV

Justin.tv is the creation of, well… Justin. Justin wears the camera 24 hours a day, 7 days a week. Even in the bathroom. Even on a date. Today I had the pleasure of Watching Justin Watch a seminar at the Kresge Auditorium in Stanford University by Mitch Kapor, the founder of Lotus.

Among other things that you can watch Justin do, include…

Justin Cleaning up after a party
Justin Meeting a Raper
Justin’s House getting raided by police (yes, seriously!)

You can also text message justin and watch him read your text here: 415-948-3219

Is this web 3.0 at the early stages or am I “just crazy”, as my Fiance would say!?

UPDATE: I’m up late tonight doing some work for a client and just decided to log on to see this Justin.TV kid bar-hopping. Then the craziest thing happend, I think he fell over and broke some of his camera equipment. So I guess Justin.TV is “To be continued”.