Filed under: Deals, Consumer experience, Google (GOOG), eBay (EBAY), News Corp’B’ (NWS)

eBay (NASDAQ:EBAY) and News Corp (NYSE:NWS) are teaming up to promote two of their most widely distributed products. The two companies have made a deal where “Skype has agreed to put Internet calls into MySpace’s instant-messaging feature to gain more users and broaden the distribution of their two services,” according to The Wall Street Journal.

MySpace has 110 million users and Skype has more than 220 million. The Journal says that starting in November, MySpace users will be able to call people through instant message. MySpace users will also be able to link to Skype’s network and integrate features of their profile into Skype.

The trouble with the idea is that it is hard to see how anyone makes money. eBay wrote down its investment in Skype because the service has brought in so little money. MySpace has an ad sales deal with Google (NASDAQ:GOOG) that will bring in $900 million over several years, but it is not clear that marketers can capture social network users the way that they can visitors to AOL Finance. The social network crowd cannot be identified with one set of interests that makes it easy to figure out what products or services they want.

It is a classic case of a partnership where 1+1=0.

Douglas A. McIntyre is a partner at 24/7 Wall St.

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Filed under: Computers, Google

Google already knows everything else about you, your schedule, the contents of your E-mail, even what web pages you visit, so why not let it get its hands on what’s inside your body?

Hot on the heels of Microsoft’s announcement of its HealthVault initiative, Google has decided to announce its plans to work on digitizing health records and making them portable. Marissa Mayer, Vice President of Search Products and User Experience at Google, made the announcement Wednesday at the Web 2.0 Summit in San Francisco. Mayer said the company became interested in the health record market following Hurricane Katrina. The hurricane destroyed not only buildings, but everything within them. This included the health records of millions of people held in hospitals and private medical practices across the Gulf Coast.

She went on to say that “it doesn’t make sense to generate this volume of information on paper. It should be something that is digital. People should have control over their own records.”

With this technology, if a patient changes physicians he could simply call up previous X-rays digitally rather than transfer or re-take them. The digital transition is hardly an overnight process, and Mayer acknowledges that. “It is a huge endeavor. It will take a lot of breakthroughs in digitization,” she said.

“You’ll be seeing a lot more activity here… so stay tuned.”

From Slashdot and Computer World

Related links:

• Google Earth — Now With Geo-Specific YouTube Videos
• Google Earth Uncovers Swastika Shaped Government Building
• Gmail Overhaul on the Way?

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Filed under: Business

September wasn’t a very good month for Sony, especially its PS3. NPD figures show that the system came in dead last, selling 119,400 units. This is less than the PS2 (215,000), the Wii (501,000) and the Xbox 360 (527,800). Granted, Xbox 360’s sales were boosted quite significantly due to the launch of the blockbuster Halo 3, with sales of the game reaching a staggering 3.3 million in its first month. Heavenly Sword, in comparison, only sold 139,000 units its first month.

SCEA responds: “According to NPD data, September 2007 was a strong month for the PlayStation brand, which showed a 13% increase in total retail dollars generated year-over-year in the US with total sales of $337 million for the month.”

Sony will have to look towards the future and hope its recent price cut announcement will keep it afloat. “PS3 continues to maintain an overall increase in sales, with 119K units sold at retail for the month. Also, with the new $399 40GB PlayStation 3 SKU hitting store shelves on November 2nd, a new $499 price point for the 80GB model effective immediately, and highly anticipated titles available this holiday, such as Racthet & Clank: Tools of Destruction, Warhawk, Heavenly Sword, Folklore, and Uncharted: Drake’s Fortune, the PS3 is poised for very strong performance through the holiday season and into 2008.”

[Via Next Gen]

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The Getac P470 Semi-Rugged Notebook is definitely not meant to sit down idly on the office desk, and in all probability is more adventurous than the average office worker. It targets professional users who require a high performance and fully-featured mobile platform that is encased in a durable magnesium alloy enclosure while offering maximum security, connectivity, and protection in a compact and lightweight package. Features include a finger print scanner and Smart Card access control to keep date stored within secure, while the shock mounted hard drive and LCD touchscreen make it hard (but not impossible) to break. It is able to brush off falls from 76cm high while functioning normally, and boasts Bluetooth and WiFi connectivity, a microphone array, and an integrated webcam.

Permalink | Comment | Uberbargain | Uberphones

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Rob Conery—the creator of the very, very slick SubSonic persistence framework—writes that he has forgotten a lot of HTML and javascript. He ain’t lying. I took his little challenge and failed miserably. Then again, I realized how glad I was that I had not had to struggle with, nor implement, manual form handling in quite some time. While I might have lost something by becoming an ASP.NET junkie, at the same time I gained a lot of very, very powerful tools to make complex, interactive web applications without having to worry too much about how to wire up HTML forms.

Here is a more realistic version of Rob’s Challenge:*

Create a form to collect registration information for an event. We require you capture:

• Full contact information (Name, address, email, etc)
• Full demographic information (Industry, employer size, buying powers, subject matter focuses)
• Session registration selections
• Hotel reservation information.
• User should not be presented with a massive gargantuan form. It should be broken down into bite sized chunks.
• User should be able to proceed forwards and backwards through the series of forms and edit information at their whim.
• Present the user with a confirmation screen showing all of their choices before persisting the information to a database, and into a separate CRM system via web services.

This application must be ready to go live by tomorrow morning.

*This is really, really realistic. I wrote two of these wizards last week.

How would you tackle this problem using ‘classic’ techniques? And how long would it take you to make all that manual handling of POST data bulletproof?

Personally, and unlike Rob, I don’t feel disconnected from my “cooler” brethren. I feel like I have a superior toolset to make complex, interactive web applications than folks still handling html forms by hand. It is OK to be a .NET guy.

This article provided by sitepoint.com.

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Filed under: Action & Adventure, Warner Brothers, RumorMonger, Fandom, Movie Marketing, Comic/Superhero/Geek, Remakes and Sequels, Trailers and Clips

I’m such a bastard sometimes, because I know exactly what you’re thinking: “Seven minutes of The Dark Knight! Online! And I can watch it now!” Unfortunately, no, but the good news is you’ll be able to watch it very soon. According to a report over on Collider (via a Portuguese website who just attended a Dark Knight set visit in London), six or seven minutes of next summer’s Batman follow-up will screen before the IMAX version of I Am Legend. This won’t be an extended trailer of sorts; from what we know, this will be an entire scene — they’re calling it a prologue about the Joker. That’s all we have to go on now, but if you planned on seeing I Am Legend when it hits theaters on December 14, you might as well skip over to the local IMAX and check it out there. No word on whether a new Dark Knight trailer will come attached to Legend in conventional theaters, but I’ve heard there may indeed be something.

We already know Christopher Nolan shot a certain amount of scenes in IMAX, one of which was a bank heist scene, but this sounds like it might be different. Additionally, and also coming from the same set visit, Collider reports that Gotham City will go through a “white night,” though there’s no explanation as to what that is. They say “Two Faces will be in the film” — not sure if that was a typo, meant to read ‘Two Face,’ but it appears that way. And, also, Batman will be traveling outside Gotham City for the first time to Hong Kong (which we already knew). I haven’t been to an IMAX film in a long time (too friggin’ big for this old man), but I may just have to suck it up and catch I Am Legend for the Batman footage. How about you? Would you rather wait until the film comes out, or are you eager to soak up any and all things Batman-related right now? The Dark Knight hits theaters on July 18.

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Filed under: Cellphones

We know, you probably forgot that a certain smartphone from General Dynamics was even in the running for NSA approval earlier this year, but lo and behold, the Q4 estimate was actually met and the coveted thumbs-up was given to the (totally unfashionable) Sectera Edge. The National Security Agency has reportedly “awarded a contract to General Dynamics C4 Systems enabling military and government users to order” the mobile, and just in case you weren’t aware of how lucrative an indefinite delivery / indefinite quantity agreement could be, this particular one has a “potential value of $300 million over five years.” Folks that end up with one of these things will have handheld access to the US government’s Secret Internet Protocol Router Network (SIPRNet) and Non-classified Internet Protocol Router Network (NIPRNet), but oddly enough, we’re not told whether top secret agencies will be kosher with third-party applications.

[Via CNET]

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Office Depot Featured Gadget: Xbox 360 Platinum System Packs the power to bring games to life!

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Filed under: Cellphones, Handhelds

No surprises in the mix here, but we’re delighted to see that Verizon is finally getting official with four smart devices that have been rumored to be in its pipeline for ages. Of the four, only the i760 from Samsung’s been priced and slated for release — October 19 online, November 2 in stores for $350 on contract after rebates — featuring Windows Mobile 6 Professional, QWERTY slide-out and offset numeric keypads, and a 1.3 megapixel camera. The XV6800 succeeds the tired XV6700, going up against Sprint’s Mogul by offering the HTC Titan reference design in a custom Verizon skin; it shows up with a 2 megapixel cam, WiFi, and a full QWERTY keyboard. Already released on several CDMA carriers, the HTC Libra sees the light of day on Verizon as the SMT5800 bearing Windows Mobile 6 Standard and a 2 megapixel cam (we loved the Libra’s GSM cousin, and we’re guessing this one’s great too). Finally, make some noise, Palm OS fans — it’s okay, don’t be shy! Verizon finally gets down with the Treo 755p, a phone that could ultimately serve as the platform’s swan song in the classic Treo form factor. As we mentioned, only the i760 has been priced and dated at this point, but we’ll keep ya in the loop just as soon as we know more.

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Office Depot Featured Gadget: Xbox 360 Platinum System Packs the power to bring games to life!

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Filed under: Videos and Screenshots

Click for high-resolution image.

So this is what Lost Planet looks like on PS3. Exactly the same as the Xbox 360 version. (It doesn’t even run in 1080p!) While many are disappointed that Capcom’s PS3 announcement was a port of a once-Xbox 360 exclusive, we’re confident that Capcom’s multiplatform engine (the one running games like Devil May Cry 4 and Resident Evil 5) will make this cross-platform transition a good one.

Or else PS3 fans will have something really nasty to scream about. Check out a video, after the cut.

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Filed under: Cell Phones, Video Games

If you live in New York — anywhere in New York — chances are you’re no more than a few miles away from the ubiquitous OTB, or Off Track Betting. It’s the place horse racing junkies go when they want to lose some money but can’t get to the track. Now, it seems, gamblers may be able to lose some money wherever they are, thanks to a mobile application called mWager. Gamblers can already place bets from the New York Racing Association website, but assuming it is approved by the New York Racing and Wagering Board, mWager would let anyone do the same from their mobile phone.

The software has been around since 2005, but this will be the first time it will be approved for use by NYRA. mWager pulls down odds and results directly to your phone along with links to specific information about the horses like jockey, trainer, and owner. Placing bets is done with just a few button presses and, presto, you’re well on your way to gaming addiction.

From textually.org

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• TV Shows’ Text Messaging Contests Illegal?
• Is the HTC Touch Better Than the iPhone?
• The Top Five E-Mail Scams

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