Cloud

For a number of reasons, some of them indeterminate, despite all the evolutionary pressure to move it to the next level of its evolution, instant messaging hasn't evolved as an application. One reason I've always suspected is that it's difficult for developers to find the impetus to devote the amount of effort required to evoke revolutionary change, on a platform that's offered to most customers for free. The counter-argument to that is that SMS isn't free, and yet it's stuck even further in the Stone Age.

If IM does resemble one ongoing revolution in application architecture, it's "the cloud" -- the nebulous, always-on service built to respond to user requests from wherever. Whereas at the beginning of the decade, services like AOL, Yahoo, and MSN used their respective IM platforms as weapons against one another, today's strategies -- which now includes Google -- have them opening up those platforms for generally unencumbered use by others. That hasn't exactly made Trillian for Windows and other multi-protocol IM clients the most perfect of applications just yet, but week after week, those of us who work in widely-dispersed offices do manage to get by somehow.

Oh, Biz Stone. A blog post about the swirling rumors of Twitter's acquisition by Google? Really? I mean, you were certainly coy enough -- the post is titled "Sometimes we talk" (cue hipster shrug) and includes an emphatically noncommittal "It should come as no surprise that Twitter engages in discussions with other companies regularly and on a variety of subjects."

My dear Mr. Stone, no. This is the brave new 140-character world you created, sir, and millions of Twitterers demand that you be pithier. So let's remove that post from your metaphorical tweetstream and go with something a bit more... in keeping? Naturally I tweeted for suggestions, and received the following:

This week, Japanese ISP BIGLOBE and spun-off parent company NEC began testing a new energy conservation incentive in the homes of 100 of its employees that turns carbon emission reduction into a game called Carbon Diet.

The circuit breakers in the testers' homes are connected to a WiFi and ZigBee-enabled device which tracks their electricity consumption. The data from the box is then converted into stats which are used in various online multiplayer games.

Microsoft's emerging Windows Azure cloud services provider will act as a platform not just for shiny new cloud applications but also for repurposed legacy applications, according to Ranjith Ramakrishnan, CTO of Microsoft third-party partner Cumulux.

According to Ramakrishnan, Microsoft is initially offering four data centers in the US and one in Europe for hosting cloud applications of both sorts. His company is now working on extending Azure enablement to its mPortal mobile portal.

Tell your boss the University of Melbourne says it's probably a good thing for you to hang out on Facebook (or in our comments threads!) today. A study released on Thursday found that people who spend part of their workday surfing the fun stuff online are actually more productive than employees whose networks (or habits) are too buttoned-down.

The survey by the Department of Management and Marketing examined the productivity and habits of 300 workers, 70% of whom said they spend at least some time each day engaging in "Workplace Internet Leisure Browsing" (news, YouTube, social networking, shopping and the like). The study found that workers who spent some amount of time doing so -- up to around 20% of their day -- displayed as much as 9% greater productivity.

Would you find it more surprising to hear that even teens are spending less during the economic downturn, or to hear that even teens are kind of nonplussed by the current music scene?

A report out this week from The NPD Group says that the 13-to-17 crowd acquired 19% less music in 2008 than they did the previous year. That's acquisition by any means -- CD purchases (down 26%), digital downloads (down 13%), peer-to-peer sharing (down 6%), even borrowing (down 28%).

Hulu is reportedly attempting to keep out the non-browser based watchers by implementing its own form of DRM with JavaScript, but the trick didn't work for long as media center applications have already been updated.

Because of the sudden popularity of solutions like Boxee and MCE, and the related displeasure they caused content providers, streaming television service Hulu has been cat-and-mousing with third parties in the way that typically ends in legal action.

Thanks to its open API, sometimes it seems as if there are many ways to parse the Twitter tsunami as there are people actually using the service. That said, social-web search site OneRiot has turned its experienced attentions to the microblogging service, and the results -- launching today -- are promising for those seeking to track the viral spread of URLs through the Tweetosphere.

Twitter's own search capacities are becoming increasingly integral to the service, as evidenced by the new homepage design they're working on over there. Third-party sites offer search-based slices of profanity on Twitter (Twittourette, spectacularly NSFW) or mental states on Twitter (twistori) or recurring keywords on Twitter (Tinker and Sideline, both launched earlier this week) or what you will. OneRiot's unique angle is to examine which URLs people are sharing in real time, learning from their tweets what it is people are talking about from moment to moment.

IBM has now set April 7 as the commercial launch date for LotusLive Engage, the latest addition to its new LotusLive line-up of social network-inspired business collaboration software. Engage is aimed at collaboration outside the organization's firewalls, meaning that business partners and customers can also be part of the online loop.

Major features of Engage include a Web meeting space, with desktop sharing, recording, and security; instant messaging, with photo and file sharing; online file storage and sharing; and project tracking, to-do lists, and brainstorming. Price Waterhouse Coopers, Nortel Networks, and Penn State University are a few of the early users.

The contributions counter on the front page ticks slowly, slowly along, but it would be faster to watch the minutes count down for Wikia Search, Jimmy Wales' "people powered" would-be Google competitor, which announced Tuesday that it was shutting down at day's end.

The Wikipedia founder wrote in his blog that the project "has not been enjoying the kind of success that we had hoped." Wikia Search, known early in its career as Wikiasari, was launched in January 2008, and rolled out its Wikia Intelligent Search Engine for developers in October.

In a move which may have forestalled a deal that may have accelerated arch-rival Hulu's "evil plot" to assimilate consumers' brains, YouTube has made an extended deal with Disney Media Networks -- parent company of the American ABC and ESPN channels -- that not only gives ABC its own branded YouTube channel, but enables Disney to manage its own in-stream advertising.

This afternoon, a hastily-produced preview video was posted to ABC's new channel in a format that could not be embedded elsewhere, contrary to the usual YouTube methodology. And a two-and-a-half minute clip from a recent SportsCenter serves as a placeholder for future content on ESPN's new YouTube channel. ESPN already has a full-featured sports news and video highlight service on Disney's own Go Network, its homebase since 2004 after Disney and Microsoft's MSN terminated their deal.

At this point, the Adobe Flash platform is ubiquitous. For many users, like the growing number of those browsing on their iPhones its absence can be point of perpetual irritation.

Likewise, Facebook has reached near ubiquity, counting everyone from octogenarian grandparents, to captive elephant seals as users. A marriage of the two is a perfect fit.

Music search engine provider SeeqPod filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection in the US Bankruptcy court in the Northern District of California yesterday. Not a large company by any means, it listed a modest $2 million in assets and $1.6 million in debts. Five percent of the company is owned by the Department of Energy's Lawrence Berkley National Laboratory.

SeeqPod is most easily remembered for being sued by Warner Music Group early last year based on the record company's belief that the search engine was built to make money off of advertising in its built-in Web player, even though it did not even advertise.

MySpace may not need any more chaos on its festively designed pages, but with traffic numbers down it could probably use some good news on the apps-development front, not to mention some good apps. To the rescue: Microsoft. On Monday MySpace announced that its Open Platform will support Silverlight, Microsoft's cross-browser, cross-platform implementation of the .NET Framework. (This runs the table for MySpace, by the way, putting it on iPhone, Android, Blackberry, Sidekick, Palm, Nokia, and now Windows Mobile phones.) The SDK will be available from Microsoft's CodePlex site on Thursday.

Google Earth has added a Wayback Machine of satellite images over the years. In the application, click the clock icon at the upper left. If there are multiple images available in that region, you'll get a sliding timeline that'll let you check them out. depending on where you're looking you may find images dating back as far as 1945, which you can step through shot by shot.

It's a nifty way of seeing how often your location of choice has been snapped by the birds and at what resolution. (Wow, remember when satellite images were black and white? Neither did we.) It's definitely a work in progress; in particular, areas with 3D views available don't seem to display correctly. And it's not half as cool as Superman flying backwards to spin the world the other way and turn back time -- if that could be done on behalf of our friends in, say, Jakarta or North Dakota, we have no doubt Google would. For now, though, enjoy the free time travel.