YouTube Moves Bring Glimmer of Hope

Simon Cowell joked that the moment Susan Boyle walked on the stage of Britain’s Got Talent, he knew the performance would be extraordinary. In the same vein, I would like to note that even as we talked about Google losing up to $1.65 million a day on YouTube, I knew that YouTube was about to take drastic action!

The first big change, and by “big” I mean 960×250 pixels big, was launched on April 15th, as YouTube Inc. turned over its prime real estate — the entire top of the home page — to advertising. Volvo took this spot on Day 1 with an innovative spot that was both commercial and enjoyable to watch — a very cool combination of unique content with some revenue-producing advertising.

Continue reading this article at Internet Evolution.

Pogoplug – Access your hard drive via the Internet

How many times have you been at work, at school or at a Starbucks working on your laptop and realized that you need a file that is on your home PC? Or maybe you wished you could share photos with friends and family without having to upload them all to Facebook or Photobucket? Sure you have a friend who loves computers and has a home network and a server and they can do it all this – but you have no desire to be a computer geek.

Read the full article at DC Internet and Tech Examiner

Hey Mikeyy, Twitter Has Some Security Issues!

It was 27 years ago when Tony Basil first sang “Hey Mikey” but today Twitter is tweeting a new twist with “Hey Mickeyy you’re so fine, You’re so fine, you hack my twitter, hey Mickeyy, hey Mickeyy.” While the details are still sketchy it is clear that Twitter was hit hard by two different worms this weekend.

If you have seen Tweets like “Mikeyy I am done” or “Twitter please fix this, regards Mikeyy” than one of the folks you are following has been infected. Twitter users need not panic as these worms were both nuisance worms and not malicious. Their only activity is to post unwanted messages. You can always check on Twitter status on their status page.

Check out the full article here.

Research Identifies Your Chance of YouTube Fame and Fortune

Who are the people who create all this social media content; specifically, the ones who spend their time creating all these YouTube Inc. videos. The standard assumption is that these people want fame and fortune, or at least fame. They want to top the charts with the most-watched video on YouTube. They want their videos to go viral and be emailed from person to person. They want to be like JerryC, who played Canon Rock to more than five-and-a-half million viewers!

But how easy is that to do? If you get inspired to create your own YouTube video, what are your real chances of success?

Check out this entire article at Internet Evolution.

I fought the law and Facebook won???

As the Facebook debate rages on over whether the creators of social media data or the companies hosting it are the real owners of this data, it’s interesting to see that innovative members of the legal system are bypassing the whole discussion and saying, “The data is public and we are going to use it.”

Consider this example from New Zealand. A young mother was convicted after using the Internet to declare a relationship she was concealing from welfare authorities. She had reported that she was a single mom and was thus eligible for $480 a week. But Web 2.0-savvy investigators checked out her Bebo and Facebook pages to find the truth: She was living with the father of her 2-year-old son, entitling her to only $140 a week. The convicted mom commented, “It came as a big surprise when I was caught. I didn’t ever think they would look me up like that.”

Read the whole article here on Internet Evolution