Articles of the Day
China Surpasses US As Largest Internet Market - China is now the world’s largest internet market by users, surpassing the US, says Beijing-based research firm BDA quoted in Reuters. Based on data from China Internet Network Information Centre - which said there were 210m internet users in China at the end of 2007 - BDA calculated that, growing at last year’s rate, China has now surpassed the US by internet users. The US had 216m online users at the end of last year, according to Nielsen. “Based on these sources and the assumption that these markets have continued to grow in 2008 to date at the same rates that they grew in 2007, we can conclude that China has by now comfortably surpassed the United States as the world’s largest Internet population,” says BDA analyst Bin Liu.
TiVo Partners With YouTube To Bring Online Videos To TV - Tivo on wednesday announced an agreement with YouTube that enables subscribers to the DVR service to view YouTube videos from their TVs. The service will be available later this year to broadband-connected subscribers with TiVo Series3 DVRs, including the new TiVo HD. Upon launch of the TiVo-YouTube service, TiVo users will be able to search, browse and watch videos directly on their television sets through their broadband-connected TiVo DVRs. Subscribers will be able to log into their YouTube accounts directly from their TiVo boxes, and access YouTube channels and playlists.
Weather Channel Rolls Out Mobile Ads - The Weather Channel said wednesday it will begin offering video ads on its mobile platform and sell the inventory in the coming upfront. With the new video forecasts on its mobile Web presence, the company said it would begin rolling out novel advertising opportunities in the second quarter. There will be 15-second post-roll video ads, along with five-second billboards in the pre-roll spot and a banner ad. An advertiser can own a particular section, the network said.The channel said its mobile locale has some 6.3 million unique users a month.
YouTube: Pushing Google To Evolve Video Search - YouTube users aren’t just browsing randomly for videos anymore–they’re using the site to search for specific clips, according to Philip Inghelbrecht, the video platform’s head of strategic partner development. “This is a challenge for us because there is simply no good video search out there today,” Inghelbrecht said, speaking at McGraw-Hill’s Media Summit on Wednesday. “If we can’t solve the search question fast enough, knowing that user behavior is shifting, that’s scary.” Search on YouTube now is based largely on the tags users attach to the videos, but the massive shift in user behavior is spurring Google to develop more advanced search technology–and quickly.
Funambol Does Mobile Social Networking, Open Source Style - Funambol, the leading provider of Mobile 2.0 messaging software powered by open source, today announced new Code Sniper projects to encourage its global community of mobile open source developers to write apps that sync content between mobile phones and social networks. Code Sniper is Funambol’s community program that rewards developers with monetary bounties to work on open source projects that benefit mobile users around the globe. This new slate of Code Sniper projects ranges from syncing pictures of friends on social networks to the address book on a mobile phone, to making it easy to invite your mobile contacts to join your favorite social network. All of the apps developed as part of Code Sniper are made freely available under standard open source licensing.
BBC and eBay Partner For ‘Green’ Platform - BBC Worldwide is partnering with eBay to promote the sale of ‘used goods’ across its new environment-related site, bbcgreen.com, NetMediaWeek reports. Under the deal, eBay will run ads encouraging surfers to buy used goods as a way of recycling. BBC Wordwide is reportedly about to announce a series of other partnerships for bbcgreen.com in the next few weeks. The UK broadcaster launched bbcgreen.com earlier this week to promote more eco-sustainable lifestyles. The platform, which is completely ad-supported, includes an ‘action plan’ section, where users can pick from a series of ideas to organise their lives in a more eco-friendly way.Every ‘action’ is labelled with a difficulty level (easy, moderate or hard) and an estimated quantity of CO2 that it could help spare, letting users automatically calculate by how much they could reduce their carbon fingerprint.
