Today I wanted to see how our site looked on all different screen resolutions. I didnt really know how to do this, but I came across a great service called Viewlike.us.
ViewLike.us allows users to quickly see what their websites look like in different screen resolutions, even including Wii and iPhone.
If your a Google Analytics users you can head to your Visitors tab and check out what screen resolutions you users are using and the try to adjust your layout accordingly.
Official.fm has just managed to grab themselves $8 million in funding to build the worlds most advanced do-it-yourself platform for music creators and content owners. The aim is to use the funds to help gain more traction and spread the music across to other download stores and services globally. The site also offers widgets, tools and analytics.
Long term: “We’ll launch premium accounts in the coming months, giving you access to new ways for you to live off of the music you create & control.”
There is a huge amount of competition in this space and it already seems as though Official.fm is going to have a lot of problems with copyrighted content. Already on the site I can download a huge amount of illegal content, so only going to be a matter of time before the labels sue them.
Disclosure: Im founder of RouteNote a digital music distributor based in the UK.
WordPress.com is closing in on 20 million hosted blogs on the platform. WordPress.com is the blogging service from Automattic’s brilliant WordPress software.
However, it seems as though Tumblr is quickly catching up with WordPress.com in terms of blogs hosted. Tumblr is only just short of 20 million blogs also, so look for them to overtake WordPress very soon.
Topix has just partnered with Blekko to power their in-site search functionality. Topix is a very large and well established local news aggregator, so this is a great with for Blekko. Blekko is a new player in the search market and any partner of this size is really going to help in their fight to gain some market share.
Google Music beta is here and you can request your invite here (only if your in the USA).
So what is Google Music? Google Music is a very basic music locker and music player. Google music allows you to store your music library in the cloud (simply just add your mp3 files) and then play your music on both PC, MAC and Android phones. Google Music is currently free but has an upload capacity of 20,000 songs.
It seems like Google are trying to get into the music industry, but the product itself seems to have a limited shelf life. I really think music streaming of an unlimited library is the way forward. Owning your own mp3 files is very limiting and is going to cost a lot to the consumer in the long run (that is if they dont torrent the files in the first place). It seems like a music subscription service on every possible device is the way the industry is moving. I think it is going to be very difficult for the leading technology companies (Google, Microsoft, Apple) to win in this market, because they will have to get their products on all platforms through very difficult negotiations.
Google Music seems to be exactly the same as the recent Amazon Cloud Drive, so Google will need to match and beat them on price.
Overall, Google Music seems to be like a poor mans Spotify.
It has now been confirmed that Microsoft have acquired Skype for $8.5 billion in cash. Microsoft and Skype are yet to confirm the deal themselves, but a press conference is expected later today.
This is a great result for all investors in Skype who were starting to get a little nervous about their anticipated IPO later this year.
Who were the big winners in this deal:
If the price is $8.5 billion. eBay received around $2.55 billion for 30%. Great result!
Founders – Niklas Zennstrom and Janus Friis made about $1.19 billion for their 14% stake.
Silver Lake, Andreessen Horowitz and the Canada Pension Plan Investment Board (CPPIB) own 56 percent of the company and that stake is worth $4.76 billion.
It will now be very interesting to see what Microsoft can do with Skype. There is already a lot of talk about Skype on Kinect and we will post a little something about that within the next hour.
Why did Microsoft buy Skype:
Great enterprise tool that uses Skype voice call, video calling and sharing options
Relationship with carrier who are looking to partner with Skype
Mainly for Windows Phone 7. Skype will offer Microsoft a competitor to Google Voice and Apple Facetime
It seems like Delicious is going to start offering advertising opportunities to its users. Delicious was recently sold to AVOS (YouTube founders new company) and it now seems like they have also acquired a small social measurement tool called Tap11.
According to the press release, Tap11 works with over 500 major brands, media companies, and agencies.
From looking and testing out the product im sure that AVOS will use the platform within Delicious and possibly offer ways for these brands to advertise within Delicious and compare their results with Twitter and Facebook. This could provide a nice end to end solution.
AVOS stated:
“Our vision is to create the world’s best platform for users to save, share, and discover new content. With the acquisition of Tap11, we will be able to provide consumer and enterprise users with powerful tools to publish and analyze their links’ impact in real-time.”
Give Away Of The Day is a website that everyday has one free program to give away. It could be anything from audio converters to security software. Each program is avaible for free for only 1 day or 24 hours. The only bad part about this is you also have to install it within those 24 hours or it will not be free. Sometime they will ofter a program for free for more then one day or offer 2 programs one day but this is really rare. You can also submit your program to go on their site. They also have another site that gives away a game every day. Although they do not offer a game every day it is still good to get free games sometimes. Check Game Give Away Of The Day out Here.
Amazon has just launched a great new membership fashion deals site, MyHabit.com. MyHabit will offer up to 60 percent off normal retail prices with free shipping and free returns. MyHabit will also feature some amazing photographs and 360 degree views of the clothing.
This daily deals site is something that Amazon could have utilised about 6 months ago, but now it seems like they are just way too late to the party.
Nerrot is a simple bit torrent searcher that finds the torrent you are looking for. Nerrot is like a Google I’m feeling lucky search. You simply type in the name of what you are looking for and it will popup a download almost instantly. Nerrot though does not have any other features so it is pretty simple as you can see from the above screen shot. Also although the searches are most of the time rite there is no way of detecting if a torrent is fake because there are no comments. I recommend this to people who are just looking to download torrent really quick.
