Skype Rolls Out Business Funded Click-to-Call

Skype today announced a new business funded click-to-call product and a strategic partnership with European Directories that will turn online search for businesses into calls for businesses.

Skype's business funded click-to-call delivers great value and convenience by making it easier and free for consumers who are using Skype to call local businesses they search for anywhere on the internet. A call that is funded by a business will be highlighted with a blue "Free Call" button that appears anywhere online where a phone number is displayed, including search engines, internet yellow pages or local search sites. This automatic phone number recognition allows Skype's more than 480 million registered users to call a participating business for free. Calls that are not funded by a business can still be connected via Skype, but at a low cost charged to the Skype user.

The partnership between Skype and European Directories will offer consumers free calls to up to 700,000 businesses across Europe. Participating European Directories advertisers will have the opportunity to be highlighted with Skype's blue "Free Call" button anywhere their number appears on the internet.

"Partnering with European Directories is a key part of bringing our new business funded click-to-call product to market and providing advertisers with solutions that can help them connect with customers in new and innovative ways," said Don Albert, GM and VP of Americas and Advertising for Skype. "When a call is free and only one click away, we believe it can have a positive impact for a business because there are fewer barriers to start a call. That can result in more qualified leads, more engagement, and possibly a higher rate of conversion for a business."

"This partnership is a great example of our evolution from a print centric company to one truly focused on lead generation. By working with Skype, European Directories can now offer its advertisers leads from yet another source in addition to existing channels such as mobile applications, print publications, our own online search sites and those of our partners. The new Skype 'Free Call' button will turn search for businesses into calls and leads for businesses. It will make our advertisers stand out from competition everywhere on the internet, including in search engines," said Cornel Riklin, CEO of European Directories.

"Skype is in a unique position with more than 480 million global subscribers that use it to make free and cheap calls," said Michael Boland, Analyst and Program Director for BIA/Kelsey. "Working with European Directories to drive calls to its local advertisers is a natural extension, and a revenue diversification move that taps into the $31 billion global Yellow Pages market."

Skype's business funded click-to-call product requires a user to have the latest version of Skype for Windows 4.1 and the latest Skype browser plug-ins in order for the blue "Free Call" button to be displayed. To download Skype for Windows 4.1, visit http://www.skype.com/download/skype/windows/.

bit.ly Goes Even More Shorter with j.mp

Today bit.ly, a url shortening service used by popular micro-blogging service called twitter, has announced that they are now offering even more shorter urls using j.mp domain. When it comes to the url shortening service, each character counts.

bit.ly domain is almost as short as it gets, however to provide even more shorter url, bit.ly announced j.mp, powered by the bit.ly platform. j.mp has the same short URLs, metrics, history, user accounts (you’ll have to login again, but your bit.ly accounts will carry over), and customization you’ve come to enjoy on bit.ly, all on a short, memorable domain.  In fact, any bit.ly URL also works as a j.mp URL.

All bit.ly users can continue to use bit.ly, as it’s not going anywhere.  But if you desperately need those two additional free characters in order to make your point, feel free to use j.mp instead.

tr.im Service Restored

Nambu has recently announced to shutdown its URL shortening service called tr.im. Reason behind shutting down tr.in was posted as “tr.im did well for what it was, but, alas, it was not enough. We simply cannot find a way to justify continuing to work on it, or pay its network costs, which are not inconsequential. tr.im pushes (as I write this) a lot of redirects and URL creations per day, and this required significant development investment and server expansion to accommodate.”

However after getting lots of positive responses, they restored the service back. tr.im service is now working as usual and users don’t have to worry any more. After their earlier decision, tr.in have been overwhelmed by the response, and the countless public and private appeals which made them to keep service alive.

More details can be found on tr.im’s blog.

Sync Your ZOHO Calendar With Microsoft Outlook

ZOHO today announced Zoho Calendar Plugin for Microsoft Outlook. This plug-in helps you to sync your microsoft outlook with zoho calendar. As more and more of the work gets done on the web, it becomes necessary for the mobile worker in you to access all the scheduled appointments and events from where ever you are. Having your Outlook calendar in sync with a web service like Zoho Calendar should make things easier for you. And that's what this plugin helps achieve.

The salient features include

• Two-way sync between Microsoft Outlook and Zoho Calendar
• Syncing multiple Outlook calendars with Zoho
• SSL encrypted login and syncing of data
• Quick import of a large number of events from your present Outlook calendar(s)
• Support for Outlook 2000, 2003 and 2007

Limitations

• Please do not close or interrupt your Outlook application when synchronization is in progress.
• Instances of Recurring Events may not work as expected in some cases.
• For the first sync process, you may experience some difficulty when synchronizing (especially if you have 1000s of calendar events).

Check out the Installation Guide and User Guide pages for how to install and work with the plugin.

More Than 10 Billion Pages View In One Month By Opera Mini Users

For the first time, Opera Mini users viewed more than 10 billion pages in one month according to the State of the Mobile Web report by Opera. The report provides information on the top global trends affecting the mobile Web. The full report is available from http://www.opera.com/smw/ (English only). In addition to the top global trends and country snapshots, the report highlights trends in North America and the Caribbean.

“More than 10 billion page views in one month underscore that the Web is already the platform of choice for mobile devices," said Jon von Tetzchner, CEO, Opera. "Web standards provide a more efficient way to create flawless sites across all devices. This strategy, called 'One Web', is more important than ever before as more people will view more pages on all manner of mobile phones.”

Global trends

• In June 2009, Opera Mini had nearly 26.5 million unique consumer users, a 4.2% increase from May 2009 and more than 143% compared to June 2008. These numbers reflect only the Opera Mini users who have specifically chosen to install the browser on their phone.
• Those 26.5 million people viewed more than 10.4 billion pages in June 2009. This means that Opera Mini servers were processing more than 346 million pages per day. Since May, page views have gone up 8.4%. Since June 2008, page views have increased 224%.
• In June 2009, Opera Mini users generated more than 168.4 million MB of data for operators worldwide. Since May, the data consumed went up by 5.6%. Data in Opera Mini is compressed up to 90%. If this data were uncompressed, Opera Mini users would have viewed almost 1.7 PB of data in June. Since June 2008, data traffic is up 236%.
• The top 10 countries for Opera Mini usage this month are (in order): Russia, Indonesia, India, China, Ukraine, South Africa, U.S., U.K., Poland, Nigeria.
• In the top 10 list of countries, India continued to move up the rankings overtaking China for third place.
• Nokia phones continue to be the handsets of preference for Opera Mini users, with Sony Ericsson claiming second place. BlackBerry and Samsung phones are the preference in the United States.

North America and Caribbean trends

• The top 10 countries using Opera Mini in North America and the Caribbean are the United States, Mexico, Canada, Costa Rica, Jamaica, Dominican Republic, Honduras, Martinique, Guadeloupe and Guatemala.
• Martinique led the top 10 countries in unique user growth (2746.1%), while Guadaloupe led in page-view growth (a staggering 9804.8%).
• Jamaica leads the top 10 countries in page views per user (357). Costa Rica (322) and Guadaloupe (308) are the other two countries with more than 300 page views per user per month.
• In North America, BlackBerry handsets are the most popular, while Sony Ericsson handsets are the most popular in the Caribbean by a wide margin.
• Google is the number one most visited site in all the countries, with the exception of Costa Rica, where Hi5 takes the number 1 spot.
• Facebook remains the most popular social network in North America, while Hi5 is the most popular social network for mobile phones the Caribbean.

Fun facts about Opera Mini:

• If every consumer Opera Mini user took a Nokia 6300 (the most popular phone among Opera Mini users) and stacked them vertically, top to bottom, the resulting tower would stretch to the International Space Station and back again...4 times.
• Those same 26.5 million phones would stretch almost halfway around the Earth (.44 the equatorial radius).
• 26.5 million Nokia 6300s outweigh the combined launch weight of a space shuttle with booster rockets and a Boeing 747.

Sources: http://www.europe.nokia.com/find-products/devices/nokia-6300/technical-specifications/, http://www.wolframalpha.com/

Turn Any Computer Into Both A Client & A Server Using Opera Unite

Opera today unveiled Opera Unite, a new technology that shakes up the old client-server computing model of the Web. Opera Unite turns any computer into both a client and a server, allowing it to interact with and serve content to other computers directly across the Web, without the need for third-party servers.

Opera Unite is a unique technology that turns any computer or device running Opera into a Web server. In other words, your computer (running Opera Unite) is truly part of the fabric of the Web, rather than just interacting with it, and it’s something anyone can use. With Opera Unite, everyday non-technical users can serve and share content and services directly from their own computers in the form of intuitive applications.

Opera Unite makes serving data as simple and easy as browsing the Web. For consumers, Opera Unite services give greater control of private data and make it easy to share data with any device equipped with a modern Web browser.

Traditionally, when a user runs a Web server in a home network, the network has a device that acts as a firewall, which needs to be configured separately, as illustrated in Figure 1.

Figure 1: A traditional Web server setup

Typically, the user will need to open ports and enable port forwarding to a local computer in order for people outside the firewall to be able to access the server.

However, when the user is using Opera Unite, no configuration is needed, as seen in Figure 2.

Figure 2: The set up when using the Opera Unite server in your browser

The Web server initiates a connection to the proxy, which uses this to pass information back about incoming requests.

For Web developers, Opera Unite services are based on the same open Web standards as Web sites today. This dramatically simplifies the complexity of authoring cutting-edge Web services. With Opera Unite, creating a full Web service is now as easy as coding a Web page.

Opera Unite is available in a special version of the Opera 10 desktop browser from Opera Labs. Opera Unite services run directly in the browser.

It is easy to use Opera Unite

1. Download the Opera Unite build from http://labs.opera.com/.
2. To start Opera Unite, click the Opera Unite logo in the lower left-hand corner of the browser and log in with your existing Opera ID — the same Opera ID used for other Opera services such as My Opera and Opera Link. Opera Unite will prompt you to register an Opera ID if you do not have one.
3. Now you are ready to use Opera Unite. Simply access your Opera Unite services from the Opera Unite panel of the browser. New services can be installed from http://unite.opera.com/.
4. Running a service will give you a direct Web address to the Opera Unite service on your device, for example: http://notebook.jondoe.operaunite.com/photo_sharing/, where “notebook” is the name of the local device serving content, “jondoe” is your username, and “photo_sharing” is the Web service being accessed. That link will also allow others to access the same Web service from your computer through their Web browser.
5. You may also see which friends are using Opera Unite services on your My Opera Unite home page.

Current Opera Unite services are as follows:

• File Sharing

  Securely share a file from your personal computer without waiting to upload it. First select the folder from which you would like to share files. Opera Unite then generates a direct URL to that folder. By giving that link to your friends, you can share files without routing through a third-party Web service.

• Web Server

  Run entire Web sites from your local computer with the Opera Unite Web Server. After selecting the folder containing your Web site, you can share and host it from the given Opera Unite URL. Opera Unite will automatically recognize index files and create the Web site as you designed it.

• Media Player

  Rock out wherever you are by accessing your MP3s and playlists from any machine. After selecting the folder containing your playlist, use the Opera Unite direct link to play your tracks directly in any modern Web browser.

• Photo Sharing

  Share your photos direct from your PC, without uploading them online. Once you select your photo folder, the photo-sharing service will create a thumbnail image gallery of your photos. Clicking the thumbnail will present the photo in its original resolution.

• The Lounge

  The Lounge is a self-contained chat service running on your computer. Your friends can access the chat room via the direct link, which will not require them to sign into any service. Depending on your privacy settings, you need only provide the generated password to your service in order for people to log in to your chatroom.

• Fridge

  Post a note on your friends’ virtual refrigerators. By sharing the direct link to your refrigerator, you and your friends, family or colleagues can exchange notes securely and privately in real time.

These six services represent the beginning of what is possible. Web developers can unleash their creativity to design unique Web services and, in doing so, unlock the full potential of Opera Unite.

• An introduction to Opera Unite
• Opera Unite developer’s primer
• Markuper — The Opera Unite service template library

Check out below video for more details:

Test Your Website Online On Multiple Browsers And OSes Using BrowserLab

As a website developer, you always want to make sure your website appears correctly on various browsers. Because of the compatibility issues across browsers and versions of browsers, your websites may display properly in firefox, however it will not open properly in IE. Last time i wrote about “Browsershots” which allows you to test your websites on multiple browsers as well as OSes. Here is a service by Adobe called “BrowserLab” which provides an easier, faster solution for cross-browser testing.

BrowserLab provides web designers exact renderings of their web pages in multiple browsers and operating systems, on demand. BrowserLab is a powerful solution for cross-browser compatibility testing, featuring multiple viewing and comparison tools, as well as customizable preferences. Since BrowserLab is an online service, it can be accessed from virtually any computer connected to the web.

Supported Browsers and Operating Systems

• Firefox 2.X and 3.X (Windows XP and Mac OS X)
• Internet Explorer 6.X and 7.X (Windows XP)
• Safari 3.X (Mac OS X)

Viewing and Diagnostics Tools

Screenshots can be viewed in a single view, side by side view, or as an overlay view with variable transparency. Each viewing option features a zoom function.

Browser Sets

Browser Sets allow designers to customize, edit, and save a combination of browsers to test.

Photobucket Introduced A Dedicated Media-sharing Site For Twitter Users

Photobucket  announced the launch of Twitgoo, a new media-sharing site for Twitter.  Twitgoo users can now tweet photos from a computer, a mobile device or directly from either Photobucket or Tinypic with an easy-to-use, one-click feature.  Twitgoo is already fully integrated with the top Twitter-related applications -- Picnik, Seesmic Desktop, Twitterberry, DestroyTwitter, Intercasting, Spaz and many others -- to ensure a seamless user experience and broad accessibility across Web, PC, and mobile platforms.

Twitgoo shares the same reliable service that Photobucket’s 81 million-plus monthly users worldwide have come to expect.  Photobucket has six years of experience delivering billions of images daily to consumers around the world, and Twitgoo is built on top of the same reliable infrastructure.  Twitgoo is also supported by Photobucket’s customer service team to create a safe environment for photo sharing.

"Photobucket is dedicated to providing reliable service to make photo and video sharing easy and accessible, no matter where our users are," said Michael Clark, senior vice president of technology at Photobucket.  "There is a shift in the paradigm of how people share and link their media.  Twitter is a cultural phenomena that has accelerated this shift and Photobucket is excited to introduce Twitgoo, a best-in-class service that makes sharing on Twitter simple, safe, stable, and straightforward."

The top Twitter API partners support Twitgoo at launch, ensuring that users will have easy access to media stored on Photobucket no matter where they update, follow or read their favorite tweets.  A list of integration partners can be found at http://twitgoo.com/-partners/. 

"Twitgoo provides users with a reliable image service that has a familiar look and feel. The team behind it is extremely responsive and considerate, determined to make the user experience as hassle-free as possible. It was my pleasure to integrate Twitgoo into DestroyTwitter, giving users a service that doesn't go down on a weekly basis. I use Twitgoo with confidence," said Jonnie Hallman, founder and developer, DestroyTwitter (http://destroytwitter.com/).

“We’re super happy to integrate Twitgoo support into Picnik. Now our users can quickly tweet their favorite Picnik’d photos. We are very selective when it comes to using APIs in Picnik, but jumped at the chance to work with Twitgoo. The API was very easy to use and the experienced Twitgoo team has done a great job of providing a stable and robust image hosting service for our users’ Twitter photos,” said Mike Harrington, COO & Co-Founder Picnik (http://www.picnik.com/).

"We chose Twitgoo as the image hosting solution for our Twitter application because it is quick, easy, reliable, and powered by the same powerful Photobucket platform that we've been working with for years,"  said Derrick Oien, President and co-founder, Intercasting Corporation.

Scribd Introduced “Scribd Store” - A New Way To Buy Digital Books & Documents

Scribed yesterday launched Scribd Store, the world’s first online document store where anyone - from professional publishers and authors to students, scientists, and artists - can sell written works to scribd community of more than 60 million!

In the Scribd Store  you can buy exclusive books, research reports, never-before-released chapters of Lonely Planet city travel guides, etc., for less.

WordPress.com Now Allows You To Post By Email

Do you use wordpress platform for blogging ? If yes, then there is a good news for you. You always wish to blog from your blackberry or outlook when you are at work. With today’s announcement, now all wordpress.com users can post  by email. This is a new feature introduced by wordpress which makes it even easier to publish to your blog: Post by Email.

Maybe you’re on holiday and want to show your journey. Maybe you’ve captured something with your cell phone that you just have to share. Maybe you’re at work and should be doing something else. With Post by Email you can keep everyone up-to-date without even opening a browser.

Post by Email is super simple to use. From the new My Blogs menu you can generate special email addresses:

You can create as many email addresses as you need, one for each blog you have access to.

Now for the fun part – send an email!

You can send email from any email client, whether in a browser, on your desktop, or from your cell phone, and as much formatting will be retained as possible.

Attachments are not left out, and your images will be included and automatically converted into thumbnails.  If you include multiple images they’ll be converted into an attractive gallery.  Now you can take photos anywhere and have them appear on your blog in moments.

If you’ve purchased the Space Upgrade then MP3 attachments will be displayed using audio player. If you’ve purchased the VideoPress upgrade then you can also include videos.

There really is no easier way to get media onto your blog.

If this hasn’t whetted your appetite, here’s a quick run-down of Post by Email features:

• Transcoding of any video files supported by the WordPress video player (mp4, mov, wmv, avi, mpg, and m4v).
• Automatic removal of standard signature blocks, with support for manual removal of other signatures.
• Add your email addresses directly into your address book using downloadable vCards. (You don’t even need to remember the address!)
• Automatic notification of a published email post.
• Conversion of YouTube URLs into embedded videos.

For advanced users wanting that little bit extra, full control of your post is possible through special shortcodes, with details provided on the Post by Email support page.

Watch out below video for more details:

New & Improved Version Of Last.fm Radio

Last.fm announced a new and improved version of Last.fm radio on the web. This new version is really amazing. There are many new features added in this version which will improve your experience with last.fm radio. Here’s a quick rundown of what’s new.

Artist slideshow

Listening page is redesigned, and at its centre is an expanded metadata area that showcases a rich catalogue of images uploaded by the Last.fm community.

Combo stations

Combo stations are finally here! Pick up to three artists, or up to three tags, and mix them together in a combination of your choosing. Classical + piano? Taylor Swift + Dolly Parton? 80s + hip hop? Sure thing. While not every pairing necessarily contains enough music to make a complete station, trying out the combinations is half the fun.

Station history

With all these new stations happening, you could use a bit of extra help keeping track of them. Now your “recent stations” can store a much longer list, and has the ability to remove the stations that you’re not into. Your most recently-listened ones rise to the top so it’s always easy to start the music back up.

And more

Including: an “in your library” section that lets you know exactly how often you have (or haven’t!) listened; a scrobble toggle so that you can play Britney Spears’ similar artists in comfort and privacy; plus plenty of other little touches that you’ll enjoy.

AOL Announces Socialthing To Bring Social Networking Services To Website

AOL announced Socialthing, a new platform that brings social networking services to websites and enables publishers to attract new users and keep them engaged wherever they are on the Web. It will launch on AOL's movie blog site, Cinematical, in the coming weeks and will eventually extend to all of AOL's network of sites.

“Socialthing turns any media into social media, making it easy for people to share their experiences in real time with their friends, wherever they are on the Web,” said Joanna Shields, President of AOL People Networks. “Built on AOL’s best-of-breed messaging technology, unrivaled social networking and media aggregation tools, Socialthing enables users to converse, connect and broadcast messages and their activities to friends on the Web.”

Socialthing combines four powerful elements to provide website owners with the reach and functionality that formerly could only be found on large social networks:

• Unified Sign-on makes it easy for users to log into Socialthing today using their AOL screenname and password, and soon using their Bebo, Facebook, Gmail, Yahoo or OpenID, without having to create a new account.
• Social Syndication will unlock the marketing power of users by letting them automatically share their experiences with their social network, including their Bebo, AIM, ICQ, Facebook, Myspace and Twitter friends.
• On-site Chat and Instant Messaging lets users engage in real-time conversations with others who share the same passions as they do.
• An Open Platform will enable third-party developers to build their applications on top of the Socialthing platform, helping them increase distribution and add value to site owners and their audience.

Socalthing will deliver users a consistent core experience across its partner sites and is enabled by three core technologies:

• The Lifestream Platform is a real-time, open platform for aggregating and distributing social feeds across different mediums. Lifestream on Socialthing lets websites unleash the power of social syndication by letting users broadcast their activities to all their Bebo, AIM, ICQ, Facebook, Myspace, YouTube, and Twitter friends. Socialthing’s distributed architecture lets updates from one Socialthing-enabled site to be distributed on other Socialthing sites, on mobile devices such as the iPhone and through the AIM and ICQ desktop clients, further increasing each site’s reach.
• The AIM & ICQ Messaging Platform brings the power of chat and Instant Messaging directly to Socialthing-enabled websites. After logging into Socialthing users will be able to join public conversations in the site’s chat rooms and communicate directly with any other user who is also logged into Socialthing on that site. The combination of Lifestream and IM makes it easy to alert AIM and ICQ buddies to breaking news and interesting stories from across the Web.
• The AOL Open Authentication API (OpenAuth) Platform currently enables third-party websites and applications to authenticate AOL and AIM users through their websites and applications. OpenAuth is now being extended so that it will include support for single sign-on from Facebook, Google, Yahoo, OpenID and many other services.  This decreases the friction for user participation on a publisher’s site while helping the site create richer profiles for their users.

Socialthing boasts a simple interface that makes it easy for even the most novice user to enjoy the benefits of social networking. Upon arriving to a Socialthing-enabled website, users sign-in using their existing credentials or create a Socialthing ID using only an email address and password.

Privacy settings for sharing content mean the user is in control of publishing activity at all times.  Whenever an action is taken on a site, Socialthing asks for the user’s consent to publish their action into a Lifestream that is then distributed to their friends. 

Socialthing lets publishers insert their own content such as news articles or breaking news directly into the feed, creating direct engagement with users on the site. Publishers can also turn their content into conversations by offering signed-in users the ability to enter public chatrooms and launch an Instant Messaging window directly from the site. Users can preview a chat before they engage in it and decide whether they want to use the built-in Instant Messenger, which lets them connect with all of their AIM, ICQ and Bebo buddies in real-time.

A site has been created at http://socialthing.com/forwebsites allowing publishers, interested in enabling Socialthing on their sites, to gain further information and insight into the platform.

Doesn’t Your Company Allow Twitter ? Huh… Don’t Worry !!

Many companies are blocking twitter website. Considering the fact that employees  are spending more time on social networking and blogging site, it will affect the productivity of companies. Twitter is one the most popular site among micro-blogging sites. If you are a corporate employee then chances are there, your company doesn’t allow you to update your status on twitter. Wouldn't it be awesome if there were a Twitter tool that looked just like Excel?

 

Spreadtweet is site that helps you to update your status even when you are on the job. Spreadtweet is a twitter, disguised as a spreadsheet. There are two versions: Adobe AIR based desktop applications and web-based version. Both allows you to add your tweet in a spreadsheet which then published to your twitter account.

You can download desktop client of your choice : Office OSX, Office 2003 (Windows), and Office 2007 (Windows).

You can also try the web-based version.

Finding Alternative Software Applications Is Now Easy

When you use some application, you may always think about alternatives. Whether its web browsers or desktop applications, you may like to check which are the applications available that provides the similar or more functionalities. Searching through Google or Yahoo! may not always provides your the alternative applications. However AlternativeTo.net do that.

AlternativeTo is a new approach to finding good software. You can search for any application that you want to replace and it will give you suggestions on great alternatives. Instead of listing thousands of more or less crappy applications in a category, it makes each application into a category. Think of it like forever evolving blog posts about good alternatives to the software that you're not satisfied with. And the "blog posts" are generated by you through suggestions, comments and votes.

You can also search an application with respect to OS (windows, Linux, Mac …).

Amazon Web Services Launches Amazon Elastic MapReduce

Amazon Web Services LLC (AWS), a subsidiary of Amazon.com, Inc., today announced the public beta of Amazon Elastic MapReduce, a web service that enables businesses, researchers, data analysts and developers to easily and cost-effectively process vast amounts of data.

It utilizes a hosted Hadoop framework running on the web-scale infrastructure of Amazon Elastic Compute Cloud (Amazon EC2) and Amazon Simple Storage Service (Amazon S3). Using Amazon Elastic MapReduce, you can instantly provision as much or as little capacity as you like to perform data-intensive tasks for distributed applications such as web indexing, data mining, log file analysis, machine learning, financial analysis, scientific simulation, and bioinformatics research. As with all AWS services, Amazon Elastic MapReduce customers will still only pay for what they use, with no up-front payments or commitments. To sign up for Amazon Elastic MapReduce and other AWS services, go to http://aws.amazon.com.

Prior to Amazon Elastic MapReduce, running Hadoop or other MapReduce-based clusters required time-consuming set-up, management, and cluster tuning. Now, Amazon Elastic MapReduce makes it more affordable and less time consuming to run parallel compute jobs, building on top of the on-demand, resizable compute capacity of Amazon EC2. Using this service, customers can spin up and tear down Hadoop clusters on Amazon EC2 on a moment’s notice. To assist customers in executing these highly distributed applications, AWS is providing a number of sample applications and tutorials to get started using Amazon Elastic MapReduce.

“Some researchers and developers already run Hadoop on Amazon EC2, and many of them have asked for even simpler tools for large-scale data analysis,” said Adam Selipsky, Vice President of Product Management and Developer Relations for Amazon Web Services. “Amazon Elastic MapReduce makes crunching in the cloud much easier as it dramatically reduces the time, effort, complexity and cost of performing data-intensive tasks.”

Amazon Elastic MapReduce creates data processing job flows that are executed by Hadoop software on the web-scale infrastructure of Amazon EC2. The service automatically launches and configures the number and type of Amazon EC2 instances specified by customers. It then kicks off a Hadoop implementation of the MapReduce programming model, which loads large amounts of user input data from Amazon S3 and then subdivides it for parallel processing using Amazon EC2 instances. As processing completes, data is re-combined and reduced into a final solution, and the results deposited back into Amazon S3. Users can configure, manipulate, and monitor job flows through web service APIs or via the AWS Management Console.

“Netflix is continually pursuing new technologies that extend our ability to deliver the best movie rental experience to our more than 10 million subscribers. Amazon Elastic MapReduce provides a powerful capability on top of the already robust Amazon Web Services technology platform. We’re enthused about the potential for this new technology to provide an even better experience to our members,” said Netflix Chief Product Officer Neil Hunt.

"MapReduce is a key component of our matching infrastructure," said eHarmony Vice President of Technology Joseph Essas. "Amazon Elastic MapReduce cuts down on configuration and management time, making the entire process much more efficient."

Wikirank Tells You What’s Popular On Wikipedia

Wikipedia has a vast database on various topics which anyone can edit. Many times we are interested in knowing what is being popular on Wikipedia. It was difficult till now, however Wikirank makes it easy to know what is popular there. Wikirank is a tool for exploring what's popular on Wikipedia, discovering comparisons between topics, and sharing them with the world.

Wikirank shows you what people are reading on Wikipedia. It’s based on the actual usage data from the Wikipedia servers, which the Wikimedia foundation makes available as a public service. Wikirank takes that data, processes it, and gives it back to you in a format that’s easy to use and share. Wikirank reveals emerging trends, and lets you embed relevant charts in blog posts and on social media sites.

There are three ways to track what’s happening on Wikirank, all available on front page. You can:

1. Compare Wikipedia topics.

At the top of the front page, you’ll see a comparison of two or more topics. From that section, you can view more detail on the featured topics, share the chart with others, or choose your own terms to compare.

2. Go where the action is.

In the second section, you’ll find the day’s “Biggest Movers” — Wikipedia topics with the most dramatic traffic shifts in the last twenty-four hours. Sometimes, these are relatively obscure topics that were simply featured on the Wikipedia main page. Sometimes topics suddenly become relevant, like when a celebrity dies, a news event takes off, or a seasonal holiday is coming up.

3. See what’s popular.

In the right column, you’ll find a list of the Wikipedia topics with the most visits over the last thirty days. They are updated nightly, and the little row of gray bars under each topic shows the traffic numbers over time.

“There are a bunch of reasons why I think Wikirank is cool, but my favorite is how it helps people find stories in the data. One of the great things about the web is how measuring tiny behaviors reveals patterns that tell stories. The data we get from Wikipedia is no different; as we started playing around with the numbers, we saw loads of interesting shapes emerge in the charts.” said Jeffrey Veen, founder of Wikirank.

New Opera Mobile 9.7, A Server-Accelerated Full Web Experience For Smartphones And Mobile Devices

At next week’s CTIA Wireless Show, Opera Software will be announcing the new Opera Mobile 9.7 server-accelerated browser for smartphones and mobile devices. Opera Mobile 9.7 features Opera Turbo, Opera’s breakthrough compression technology, along with the company’s latest Presto 2.2 rendering engine (also used in Opera 10 desktop) and full support for dynamic Web technologies such as Ajax and Flash (for accessing popular sites like Facebook and YouTube).

In today’s tough business climate where customer expectations are ever-increasing, Opera Mobile 9.7 with Opera Turbo can help carriers reduce network congestion while helping mobile device manufacturers bring increased speed and a more rich Web browsing experience to their customer and users.

For carriers specifically, Opera Mobile 9.7 with Opera Turbo provides a more consistent and compelling full Internet experience by compressing data up to 80%, thus reducing unwanted traffic and congestion and allowing users to access the Web regardless of network limitations.

For mobile device manufacturers, Opera Mobile 9.7 with Opera Turbo can make for a faster, more rich browsing experience by leveraging current device capabilities and utilizing hardware resources more effectively. Opera Turbo offloads Web page rendering to Opera servers freeing up device resources. Even devices with limited hardware capabilities show improved page download rates and better overall performance.

“Today, carriers and mobile device manufacturers alike are looking for solutions that take advantage of existing technologies and investments while trying to maintain a high level of service for their customers,” explains Rod Hamlin, Senior Vice President for the Americas for Opera Software. “Opera Mobile 9.7 with Opera Turbo gives our business customers to ability to bring a rich Internet browsing experience to their mobile device and to the end-user without having to allocate new resources and development costs.”

Opera Mobile 9.7 with Opera Turbo also features better standards support (100% Acid 3 test) and developer tools, hardware acceleration Open GL ES, and support for Google Gears.

To learn more, check out the Opera Mobile 9.7 with Opera Turbo demo video.

Digg Founder Kevin Rose’s New Start Up “WeFollow” – A User Powered Twitter Directory

Digg is one of the top human powered content staring site. Founder of Digg, Kevin rose announced his new start up WeFollow. Considering the growth of micro-blogging service Twitter and its benefits, many twitter applications floating on the blogosphere.

WeFollow has the similar concept that applied to Digg. WeFollow is a user powered twitter directory. Site allows any twitter users to be added in the list. To add yourself in the list is simple. All you have to do is to tweet @wefollow with the top three tags that you want to be associated with. If you visit the site, you will find a button on right side saying “Add yourself to WeFollow”. Just click on it and it will take to your twitter page where you have to replace the “#yourtag” with any three tags that you want to associated with.

You can find some popular tags on front page. Moreover you can search for any tags in the directory.

Seesmic Announced It’s Desktop Application For Facebook

Seesmic launches the first facebook desktop client application today. "Seesmic for Facebook" desktop application which is available from today as a free download. Based on the technology behind Twhirl, Seesmic for Facebook lets you keep track of your friend's Facebook status and easily update your own.

You will need Adobe AIR installed on your computer - available free from http://get.adobe.com/air/ open the Seesmic air file with Adobe Air when installed. PC/Mac.

Seesmic also makes the popular Twitter client Twhirl and soon release a client with both Facebook and Twitter integrated into one, Twhirl already supports multiple Twitter accounts, Identi.ca, Friendfeed and Seesmic videos. Seesmic for Facebook supports text for now but Seesmic will soon support posting pictures and videos and more.

Friendfeed Developed It’s Own Desktop Notifier Client Using Adobe AIR

Twitter has many desktop client to get twitter update at your desk. However friendfeed has probably very less. So friendfeed came up with its own desktop notifier which enables you to get your friendfeed notifications on your desk.

It's a super-fast download and takes just two clicks to install.

Features

• Instant notifications
• Choose updates from your Home feed or any of your Friend lists
• View, like and comment directly from the notification window
• Drag the window to anywhere on your desktop

You can choose to get updates from your Home feed or any of your Friends lists. Clicking on the little window takes you to FriendFeed for easy viewing and commenting. And you can drag the window to anywhere on your desktop.

The FriendFeed Notifier is an Adobe® AIR™ application that watches the FriendFeed real-time update feeds.

You can try it out: http://friendfeed.com/settings/notifier. Consider yourself notified.