Category: Tech

If you’re into the location check-in thing, you’re probably well aware that Foursquare is the poster child. While they stay at the forefront of location-based services, Gowalla can’t be counted out yet and is preferred by many users. While the check-in itself is the primary focus of these sites, that’s not where the value lies. Gowalla’s new Highlights feature takes us beyond the check-in:

The best way to think about the feature may be to think back to the “25 Things About Me” meme that spread throughout Facebook last year. The meme asked you to answer a set of 25 questions and send the answers to your friends. Gowalla Highlights is similar in that they want you to tag about 20 real world places based on a set of criteria. For example, you’re asked to name you favorite “Date Night” spot, the place you think has the “Best Tacos,” your “Alma Mater,” and your favorite “Watering Hole,” among other things. Each of these answers reveals a bit about who you actually are, and where you spend your time. — MG Siegler

Rather than simply racking up check-ins or points and becoming the virtual mayor of some location, this approach by Gowalla makes check-in data useful to all users. For instance, if you visit a place that is special to someone you know, you’ll be alerted of that. If you want to find out where to kick off family night, you can see what the community recommends.

The very features that made Gowalla awkward for some users in the beginning may be the ones that keep them in the location race. Initially, virtual goods were a big part of the service. You could “pick up” and collect these virtual goods as you traveled to different locations. That feature is still available, but has been played down a bit in favor of offering real world interaction.

Highlights will become part of the API just like other Gowalla features and this is where it will shine. Not only is location data useful in features like Highlights and Trips, but it will be interesting to see what developers create using this data.

Gmail has always done a pretty good job of making sure you never see spam. This helps cut down on the amount of email clutter we have to deal with, but this isn’t the whole picture. While Gmail offers an extensive filtering system to help you achieve the coveted “Inbox Zero,” you still have to know what you’re doing. It can also be a tedious process.

Priority Inbox aims to help you with that. Rather than manually going through your emails and trying to categorize what should go where and what is important, Priority Inbox does it for you based on your habits.

Gmail has always been pretty good at filtering junk mail into the “spam” folder. But today, in addition to spam, people get a lot of mail that isn’t outright junk but isn’t very important—bologna, or “bacn.” So we’ve evolved Gmail’s filter to address this problem and extended it to not only classify outright spam, but also to help users separate this “bologna” from the important stuff. In a way, Priority Inbox is like your personal assistant, helping you focus on the messages that matter without requiring you to set up complex rules.

The way it works is simple. Your inbox will now be broken down into three separate sections:

• Important and Unread – these are messages that are important to you and you have not read them yet. If you see anything in this section that is actually not important, you can click a button to remove it. Gmail learns from the changes you make.
• Starred – these are messages you manually starred. They may or may not be important, but you have decided you want to keep them visible.
• Everything Else – just as the name states, this is all the other “stuff” that is hitting your Inbox. As you move through this section, you can click a button to star or mark something as important. Again, Gmail learns from the changes you make.

As messages come in, Gmail automatically flags some of them as important. Gmail uses a variety of signals to predict which messages are important, including the people you email most (if you email Bob a lot, a message from Bob is probably important) and which messages you open and reply to (these are likely more important than the ones you skip over). As you use Gmail, it will become better at categorizing messages for you. Users can help it learn by clicking the or buttons at the top of the inbox to correctly mark a conversation as important or not important. (You can even set up filters to always mark certain things important or unimportant, or rearrange and customize the three inbox sections.)

Priority Inbox will be rolling out over the next week to everyone, including Google Apps users. When it’s activated for your account, you will see a red link saying “New! Priority Inbox” in the top right of your Gmail. You can also check to see if you have a new “Priority Inbox” tab in your settings.

via Email overload? Try Priority Inbox – Official Gmail Blog

As Apple’s event approaches, rumors about what they will be announcing center around 2 updated devices: an iPod Touch and an iPod Nano. The new iPod Nano will keep its dock connector, but will be drastically different size and shape. Rumors say the iPod Touch may feature 3G connectivity.

People familiar with the matter indicated that the size and shape of the device, revealed this week through photos of third-party cases, will be more akin to the iPod shuffle than the current-generation iPod nano. Even with this small size, however, it is expected to have a traditional iPod dock connector, allowing compatibility with the existing iPod accessory ecosystem. — AppleInsider

Despite it’s shrinking form-factor, the new iPod Nano may have a slightly bigger screen, going from about 3cm by 2.5cm to 3cm by 3cm. Apparently, the speculation hinges mostly on case designs from overseas manufacturers. In the Nano’s case, it seems there will also be buttons on the side. Those buttons on the side may not be enough to actually navigate the device, so there is also speculation that it may have a touch screen. An opening in the back of the case indicates either a clip or possibly more controls.

What may be more interesting is speculation the a next-generation iPod Touch would include 3G and/or WiFi as the iPad does. Apple has had much success with the iPad device and they may be looking to milk it for all it’s worth.

People familiar with Apple’s plans have also heard over the last few months that the company has strongly considered mimicking its iPad offerings by adding a 3G option to some of its iPod touch portable media players, though it is unclear whether the Cupertino-based company has decided to proceed with those plans as part of next week’s announcement.

In addition to wireless connectivity, it’s rumored that the new iPod Touch may come with dual cameras for FaceTime action. It may also have Apple’s Retina display that we’ve seen on the iPhone 4. This would be an interesting move as Apple could eventually take business away from the very carries providing the data connection. Why buy a complete mobile plan when all you need is a data plan to make and receive calls using FaceTime?

via Business Insider

Intel is buying Infineon’s Wireless Solutions Business (WLS) in a cash transaction valued at about $1.4 billion. The deal should close in the first quarter of 2011. This latest acquisition by Intel will help them expand their current WiFi and 4G WiMAX offerings to include Infineon’s 3G abilities and support Intel’s plans to accelerate LTE.

This comes just after Intel acquired McAfee for $7.68 billion. Similar to the earlier deal, Infineon will continue to run as a standalone business. Intel says they are commited to existing WLS customers and support for ARM-based platforms.

“The global demand for wireless solutions continues to grow at an extraordinary rate. The acquisition of Infineon’s WLS business strengthens the second pillar of our computing strategy — Internet connectivity — and enables us to offer a portfolio of products that covers the full range of wireless options from Wi-Fi and 3G to WiMAX and LTE. As more devices compute and connect to the Internet, we are committed to positioning Intel to take advantage of the growth potential in every computing segment, from laptops to handhelds and beyond.” — Paul Otellini, Intel president and CEO

According to a recent report from The Linley Group, Infineon ranked fourth in cellular-baseband shipments last year with a 10.7 percent unit share. According to CNET, ” Teardown sites show that Infineon silicon plays an important role in the iPad and iPhone 4. UMB TechInsights shows two chips: an Infineon GSM/W-CDMA transceiver and a baseband processor.”

And this is a long-range plan. Intel is slated to bring out a smartphone-centric chip called Medfield by early next year that squeezes what is now two pieces of silicon into one chip, using Intel’s most advanced 32-nanometer manufacturing technology. This will be the first step. After Intel gets the Medfield application processor into smartphones, then it will progress to further integration beyond Medfield.

Infineon’s acquisition represents the second pillar of Intel’s strategy, which falls along the lines of Internet connectivity. If you recall, McAfee represented the third pillar: security. Intel is aggressively trying to get into the phone CPU market and this latest deal could put them in a position to compete against the likes of Qualcomm and ARM.

via Intel to Acquire Infineon’s Wireless Solutions Business, CNET

In a post on Angstro’s blog, Rohit Khare bids farewell to his users. He has decided to sell the company to Google and work with them on Google Me. While the Google Me project is still unconfirmed, Khare has created a number of products that would be beneficial to such a product.

Salim and I would like to thank everyone who was part of the adventure — not least, the thousands of users and beta testers who helped define our products and inspired our whole team.

While our work here may be done, the struggle for open, interoperable social networks is still only just beginning, and I’m looking forward to working on that in my new role at Google.

Though many view Google as having all thumbs and two left feet when it comes to social networking, they have made major moves in that direction. Primarily, they have acquired talent and the Khare will be a valuable asset to the team.

He will likely be working with Max Levchin, the former CEO of Slide, CTO of PayPal and Google’s newest VP of engineering, as well as Google VP of Engineering Vic Gundotra, who was reportedly instrumental in recruiting Khare.

Khare’s earlier work revolves around creating an “open, interoperable social networks.” This seems to align with Google’s efforts in social media. Rather than erect another walled-garden like Facebook, they mostly stick to an open infrastructure. At Angstro, they built a service that pulled information about your friends and colleagues from the blogosphere and social media sites like Facebook and LinkedIn. This data was then delivered to you, but this same technology could also be very useful for Google Me.

According to someone familiar to the situation, Khare was swayed by Vic Gundotra’s pledge to be serious about social. Google has confirmed the acquisition, but declined to comment on Khare’s official position. Khare could not be reached for comment.

Even though Google Me has not been confirmed, it seems pretty obvious Google is up to something. It looks as though they will leverage Gmail, against the protests of many, to build out a social hub of some kind. There is no reason Google Buzz should be embedded physically in your Gmail, but it is. Why integrate Voice Calling so tightly within the email interface? You cannot access this feature outside of your inbox.

They are up to something in this is just another piece of the puzzle.

via LA Times

Kodak Releases Camera with One-Touch Sharing to Social Media Sites

The new Kodak EasyShare M590 not only is it world’s thinnest 5X optical zoom digital camera, but it also allows you to easily upload your photos to your favorite social media websites. All you have to do is hook up your camera to your computer, press the Share button, and the software uploads your photos to the sites you’ve specified. You can tag photos directly on the camera. The software connects with the Kodak Gallery, YouTube, Facebook, Flickr, and Orkut. The M590 comes in purple, red, blue, or silver and you can grab one for $199.95. via TNW

Firefox 4 Beta with Sync and Panorama

Firefox 4 Beta is packing a couple of interesting feature enhancements. The Sync feature makes it simple to take your Firefox experience with you. It makes your bookmarks, history, Awesome Bar, passwords, form-fill data and open tabs accessible across multiple computers and mobile devices.

Panorama is a cool way for managing and prioritizing all those tabs you keep open. As hard as we might try, many of us just can’t figure out how get rid of all those browser tabs. Others are just fine with 20 or so tabs open at a time. No matter which side of the fence you’re on, Panorama can help you manage your tabs and get things done. Check out the video for more.

via The Mozilla Blog

Orkut Comes Out of Hiding Encouraging Different Personas

Remember Orkut? No? It’s Google’s social networking site that few Americans use. A few days ago, Google posted about one of the problems with the way most social networking sites work. Most sites treat all of your friends the same and show them all the same you. This isn’t how it works in the real world. You probably act differently depending on which group you’re around. As far as social networking goes, this is one of the reasons many people just lock everything down, hiding from their boss, their parents, and potential employers.

Until now, social networks treated people from different groups like they were all the same: they were all “friends”. So we asked ourselves: does it need to work this way on the Internet? Can we reproduce our groups of friends from real life on the Internet? The answer is “yes!” Starting today, we will change the core function of Orkut so we can share and interact with different groups of friends on the Internet just like we do in real life.

While sites like Facebook do offer lists, their just not that easy to manage. Orkut can automatically create your groups for you based on your interactions. Because of this update, many have started to speculate that Orkut itself is this mythical Facebook killer called Google Me. More info and updates at the Orkut blog.

Users Make 1 Million Voice Calls via Gmail on First Day

Google Tweeted on Thursday that 1,000,000 calls had been placed from Gmail in just 24hrs. Pretty impressive given the service is only available to a fraction of the population. What’s more interesting is how you can end up benefiting from the service unintentionally. Stephen Shankland of CNET recounts how, after setting up the service by installing the plugin, a call came in to his mobile and rang his computer as well. This let him conduct an interview using his computer headphones rather than trying to squeeze his mobile phone between his shoulder and ear for an hour. In addition, he was able to see and return a missed call from the computer, which I have done as well. These examples assume you’ve hooked up a Google Voice account, but you can’t deny the convenience of making free calls from your computer with minimum setup.

Foursquare Mayor Alerts

Ever wonder how close you are to becoming the Foursquare mayor of your favorite spots? If you get within 10 checkins of the current mayor, you’ll be able to see a countdown to when you will oust them. They’ve also made changes so that Managers and Employees for each venue can’t become the mayor. This should open things up for other users and will probably get many users motivated to make sure they get that daily checkin. via RWW

It seems that Apple has decided to take their toys and go home after playing in the technology sandbox with SurfaceInk for the last decade or so. SurfaceInk, a small Silicon Valley design firm, may have helped Apple with many of their successful gadgets. We can’t know because of confidentiality agreements, but it looks like the last straw came when SurfaceInk demoed their own tablet prototype at a trade show.

Eric Bauswell, founder and CEO of SurfaceInk, confirmed the news on Thursday, saying that his company and Apple had “gone separate directions.” Mr. Bauswell wouldn’t give up the details, but did say that “Apple’s growing awareness of our turnkey capabilities. I think they view our capabilities as an opportunity for competitors, “ he said. The company employs 50 people and their “turnkey capabilities” refer to their method of creating products and licensing them to other companies.

Such a general statement doesn’t really seem to make sense as the primary reason for the falling out. SurfaceInk has designed products for Apple’s competitors for some time now. Founded in 1999, the company has designed Palm handsets and Hewlett-Packard computers, both coincide with products they may have collaborated with Apple on.

While Apple has declined to comment, it seems pretty obvious that they’re not too happy about SurfaceInk’s prototype 12.1″ tablet computer. The iPad currently dominates the tablet market, but with Android going strong and so many manufacturers stepping into the tablet arena, it makes sense that they would get a little defensive. The iPad, after all, is wildly popular because it was the first, not the best.

Before display the tablet at the trade show, SurfaceInk mostly relied on word-of-mouth for getting clients. Bauswell says the tablet display was meant only to showcase SurfaceInk’s design skills, but Apple took things the wrong way and perceived them as a threat. What’s even more ridiculous about Apple’s move here is that they just gave SurfaceInk all the publicity they probably needed to become a real threat.

It’s understandable that Apple might get upset about its tablet territory being invaded. They already seem to be losing ground to Android in the mobile device market and still lag behind Blackberry. No matter what Apple does, there will be a plethora of tablet models in the mix within the year. Their stranglehold on the tablet market will go away. They will have to do something drastic to keep up their mystique.

via NY Times, DailyTech

Realtime search has been a part of your Google experience for a while. While it added some flair and more information to your results, Google has decided it can do more. To do this, they have given realtime search its own home and added a few new features and tools to make it more useful.

When we first introduced our real-time search features last December, we focused on bringing relevance to the freshest information on the web. Our goal was to provide real-time content from a comprehensive set of sources, integrated right into your usual search results. Today we’re making our most significant enhancements to date, giving real-time information its own home and more powerful tools to help you find what you need.

You can now find Google Realtime Search at http://www.google.com/realtime but, if it hasn’t rolled out to you yet, just use this link to play with it. You can also access realtime results by choosing the Updates option in your Google sidebar.

Realtime Search updates right before your eyes as new results come in. It pulls updates from services like Twitter, FriendFeed, Facebook, and Buzz. Depending on what topic you search for, things could get a little hectic, so you can filter things in a couple of ways:

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Netflix has launched their free app for iPhone and iPod Touch. It was previously only available on the iPad, but they had promised to expand it to all iOS devices. That day has finally come. Now, for as little as $9/month, you can instantly stream unlimited movies and TV shows on a device that fits in your pocket.

“Apple has changed the game for mobile devices,” said Reed Hastings, Netflix co-founder and chief executive officer. “We’re excited that our members can now carry Netflix around in their pockets and instantly watch movies and TV shows streamed from Netflix right to their iPhone or iPod touch.”

The app works over 3G or Wi-Fi, so you can keep yourself entertained wherever your are. It has a clean and intuitive interface organized into different categories including popular genres, new arrivals, your personal instant Queues, and personal preferences. Switching between different devices is as simple as ever. If you’re watching something on your iPhone/iPod and decide you want to bring it to your big screen, Netflix drops you in right where you left off.

There are some things that still need some work. You can only see three movies at a time on the screen, which will require excessive scrolling if you have a lot of movies in your queue. Scrolling isn’t as smooth as in other apps because Netflix uses its own custom list view and you can’t tell how far up/down you are. You might be better off using the Search feature than trying to scroll through the lists.

The new app also doesn’t fully take advantage of iOS and the iPhone 4’s retina display. The graphics in the app are low-quality compared to other apps. They have also failed to leverage the fast-app switching (multi-tasking) features of iOS. This means that leaving the app for any reason will end your session and make you to start over when you come back.

Overall, this is still awesome for iPhone and iPod Touch owners, so go download it and tell us what you think in the comments. I suspect that Netflix will address many of the initial concerns and user feedback in later updates. We can also expect Netflix to gain some paying subscribers as they get hooked into the instant streaming on their devices via the 30-day trial.

I just want to know where the Android version is. Rumor has it that Netflix is looking to hire an Android video playback expert, so it may not be that far off.

via PR Newswire, ReadWriteWeb, Silicon Alley Insider, CNET

UPDATE: When we initially posted this, the feature had not been announced yet. At their press event this morning (9:30am PST), Google made it official. You can now make calls from within Gmail. Just scroll down to your Google Talk widget and you should see a link that says “Call Phone.” This pops up a keypad for you to dial a number or type a name. Call any number in the US and Canada for free, at least until the end of the year.

• If you have Google Voice, you can also receive calls to your Gmail.
• You can always “upgrade” to Google Voice to add this feature.
• Outgoing calls will show your Google Voice number if you have one.
• You need the Google Voice and Video plugin for this to work.

If you weren’t interested in Google Voice before, you probably are now. If you can make calls from Gmail, why not receive them as well? Very smart way to get more interest in Google Voice. Google will also be putting up red phone booths at airports an universities that will let people test out the GV service.

Google Voice Calling

Google is testing a web-based voice calling feature that will be embedded in the Google Talk widget at the bottom left of your Gmail. This comes according to CNET.

It’s launched from the Google Chat window on the lower left-hand side of a Gmail page and allows users to place and receive calls from within their contacts through a user interface that strongly resembles the one used in Google Voice.

This could turn Gmail into a serious communications hub, with email, IM, and voice calls all in the same place. While the user interface for this new service looks almost identical to Google Voice, using some of the same icons and design, it’s unclear whether it will actually be tied to Google Voice. You don’t need a PaydayLoanHelpers to use it and Google has nothing against duplicating features in their products, so it remains to be seen if the two are related. How can I get an unsecured loan services online? Visit pickaloan.co.uk for more info.

Ever since Google Voice came along, many speculated about Google competing with Skype and using the Voiptoners initiative. Google’s acquisition of VoIP provider Gizmo5 and codec developer Global IP solutions seemed to confirm this speculation.

Like Google Voice, the new service offers free calling to the US/Canada, with low international rates. Google could be about to take a huge bite of Skype’s market.

Google Finance Mobile

The mobile interface to Google Finance just got a major overhaul. A “fast, easy-to-use” mobile website was one of the most requested features and Google has delivered. Your finance data, charts, and reports are now easily accessible wherever you go. It features buttons and tabs in place of basic links so that it works well on touchscreen devices. Because it’s a website and not an app, it works on Android and iPhone.

The markets don’t stop when you leave your desk, so we’re bringing the markets to you. Our new design gives you a unified experience across desktop and Android or iPhone phones, offering nearly all the same features and functionality on both.

You can access the new interface by doing a stock-related Google search on your mobile device, or clicking the “Finance” tab on the Google mobile homepage.

via CNET, PCWorld,Google Mobile Blog

According to the latest from Nielsen, African Americans, Women, and Southerners talk and text the most in the United States. African Americans run up more than 1,300 minutes a month on average, followed by Hispanics at 826 minutes, Asian/Pacific Islanders at 692 minutes, and Whites at 647 minutes each month.

African Americans and Hispanics also text the most. Hispanics send and receive around 767 SMS messages a month while African-Americans send and receive around 780 – significantly more than Asians/Pacific Islanders (384 texts a month) and Whites (566 texts a month). The voice and text results are compiled from one year (April 2009-March 2010) of mobile usage data gathered by the The Nielsen Company, which analyzes the cellphone bills of more than 60,000 mobile subscribers each month in the United States.

While African Americans in general make heavy use of their basic cell phone features, Women also stand out as a power user group. Women talk 22% more than their male counterparts, coming in at 856.3 minutes a month compared to men’s 666.7. They dominate in texting as well, using an average of 601 SMS messages a month compared to 447 used by the average American male.

As it might be expected, teens (<18) completely rule texting. They use 2,779 SMS messages on average each month. The 18-24 crowd is next in line, but only uses 1,229 messages per month on average. The 25-34 crowd comes in at 592, 35-44 at 441, and grandma and grandpa are probably sending and receiving less than 234 text messages each month.

This data is important for a number of reasons. If you’re trying to get people organized, mobilized, or keep them informed, you have to know the best ways to reach them. There is a reason no one under 30 listens to voicemail you left them.

This is also one of the reasons why there are so many black people on Twitter, if you missed the point. Even as some data suggests that African Americans are heavy mobile data users as well, it is imperative that we do not ignore talking and texting as options for communication. This is important whether you’re trying to run a business or start a movement.

It’s about lowering the bar to accessibility. One could argue that Twitter owes much of its success and growth to the fact that they supported SMS early on. No need for a special app or a data plan. It just worked on everything from the latest smartphone to the free Nokia with the monochrome screen. On the flip side, because so much of our community is into texting, Twitter and other platforms for SMS remain relevant and useful.

via African Americans, Women and Southerners Talk and Text The Most in the U.S.

Today, Dell is launching its first smartphone in the US. The Aero is available for $100 on a 2-year contract with AT&T or $300 with no contract. The phone is designed to be lightweight and, while Dell says it was “designed to deliver a powerful, flexible, and entertaining experience in a stylish and compact design,” it seems as though the real focus was on “stylish” and “compact.”

“The Dell Aero is built with a focus on style and performance to help people find new ways to connect with friends and express themselves socially supported by the nation&apos;s fastest mobile broadband network.” – Ron Garriques, president, Dell Communication Solutions

Compared to most other phones out there, the Aero is definitely lighter and more compact. Instead of running the latest version of Android, or at least something approaching the latest, it’s running a version of Android that came out around April 2009: Android 1.5. There is no word as to whether it will support an upgrade to 2.2 or newer, but I’m doubtful.

It’s especially a pity since there are genuinely some things here to like: 5MP camera with 8x zoom, up to 32GB microSD memory. Even the 624Mhz processor, while not as snazzy as a 1GHz Snapdragon, is nothing to be ashamed of in a $100 phone. — Gizmodo

The Aero will ship with a customized version of Android which will include: handwriting recognition, Microsoft Exchange e-mail capabilities, the Quick Office mobile productivity application, a search manager, and the Facebook application.

This skinned version of Android is probably why the phone is shipping with an obsolete version and why upgrades may be a long time coming. Skinned versions of Android are the norm (think HTC Sense), but significantly delay upgrades because they have to be re-tooled every time.

On the plus side, it’s good to see an Android phone at a lower price. For the average mobile user, Android 1.5 may work out just fine. For those of us trying to coast along the bleeding edge, 1.5 would be mostly useless. The problem of OS fragmentation is a real one and 1.5 is worlds apart from 2.2 or the upcoming Android 3.0. Finding apps for the Aero may become difficult.

via Gizmodo, Reuters,

Tumblr is growing at a ridiculous pace. Some time last night, they crossed 1 billion posts, breaking the layout of their About page. Looks like their web designer didn’t think they’d reach 1 billion this fast. Even as they grow, there are still issues with Tumblr ranking in the search engines.

According to TechCrunch, Tumblr stands at 7.2 million users. They are creating 5.2 million posts each day. Quantcast says that Tumblr gets 1.7 billion page views every month. Only half of Tumblr’s users reside in the US and they add about 25,000 new users every day.

There are Tumblr applications available for iPhone and iPad. Just this month, they also launched an app for Android. They are experiencing the type of growth that we may have seen with Twitter just as they hit the mainstream. The problem is that the very features that make the site so easy to get into are what prevent it from ranking well in search.

Google’s algorithms are based on mostly on content and backlinks. Both of these can be generated very easily in Tumblr. The Reblog feature lets you immediately grab and repost any content you see on Tumblr. Reblogging also gets you a backlink from the source. You can reblog something in about 4 seconds according to Soshable.

To put it into perspective, one of our clients currently runs 15 successful and content-rich Tumblelogs and spends less than 30 minutes a day keeping them maintained.

It’s easy to see why Google is wary of giving these tumblogs any authority in search. Many of Tumblr’s 1 billion+ posts are simply duplicates. The core of Tumblr’s growth is in users duplicating content and creating backlinks using the Reblog feature. Duplicating content waters down the authority of Tumblr posts and the proliferation of backlinks makes it look like a link farm. Outbound links from Tumblr are probably tainted because of this setup.

As Tumblr continues to grow in popularity, it will be interesting to see if Google makes any moves to change their algorithms. Most current Tumblr users probably couldn’t care less whether people can find their blogs via search, but things may have to change if Tumblr is to really succeed in the mainstream.

Many bloggers dream of making some decent money for their online efforts. Only a handful ever actually turn a profit on their blogging. Most don’t even make enough to buy candy, but Philadelphia still wants a cut of these non-existent profits.

Marilyn Bess has made about $50 over the past few years as a contributor for eHow.com and working on her own blog. According to the city of Philadelphia, this means her hobby is a potential source of income and they want a cut. This wouldn’t be such a big deal, but they are demanding $300, the price of a business privilege license.

“The real kick in the pants is that I don’t even have a full-time job, so for the city to tell me to pony up $300 for a business privilege license, pay wage tax, business privilege tax, net profits tax on a handful of money is outrageous.”

Bess is not alone. Many bloggers in the Philly area were served up with similar demands after filing their taxes. Why? Because they reported income from blogging activities. No matter how small, each was told they owe $300 plus taxes on their income. According to Sean Barry, who made $11 over two years on his music blog, he doesn’t believe blogs should be taked unless they’re “making an immense profit.”

Of course, the cash-strapped city doesn’t agree. Tax attorney Michael Mandale of Center City law firm Mandale Kaufmann says that the city requires a privilege license for any business engaged in any “activity for profit.” This applies “whether they earned a profit during the preceding year.”

What is most disturbing about this is that the city is charging people up based on the potential to earn revenue. If you even think of starting up a blog and putting some ads on it, the city feels that you own them $300 plus taxes on whatever you make. It doesn’t matter if you make nothing. It doesn’t even seem to matter if you actually monetize or not since just about every blog has space for ads, thus potential to earn cash.

City Council members Bill Green and Maria Quiñones-Sánchez are looking to reform the city’s business privilege tax to make Philly more attractive to small business. Under their proposal, bloggers would still have to fork over $300 for a privilege license, but wouldn’t have to pay any taxes on their first $100,000 in profit. Not much of a step-up as most bloggers will never even earn enough to cover the $300.

This is definitely not a good look for people in Philly and bloggers are not the only ones affected. Anyone deciding to step out on an entrepreneurial branch must pay up according to the law. Bloggers, freelance writers, starving artists, babysitters, even moms trying to earn a buck selling crocheted hats on Etsy.

Do you think Philly is being fair?

Ning made a controversial move back in April when they decided to ditch their freemium model, leaving many users out in the cold. While the change in direction was for the best interests of Ning, many businesses using Ning felt the sting. To make matters worse, there is simply no easy way to migrate a Ning network. Despite the slap in the face to many users, things are definitely looking up for Ning.

Since ditching free, 35,000 Ning networks have signed up for paid plans. 265,000 presumably have not, but no matter: those numbers mean Ning wooed nearly 12% of its non-paying customers into opening up their wallet–more than double its previous conversion rate. Ning’s paying customer base is now three times its previous size.

At this point, all free Ning networks have been shut down. You can no longer create a free network, but you can take advantage of a 30-day trial. The reason that Ning made this decision boils down to numbers: 300,000 free networks previously on Ning only brought 20% of revenue and 25% of traffic. The rest came from the 15,000 paying customers. In addition to not making Ning any money, these free networks “sucked down its most expensive resources — headcount, bandwidth and infrastructure — at a rate Ning could not support.”

Of the 35,000 who have signed up for a paid plan with Ning, you would think most would opt for the cheapest plan, which comes in at $3/month. This doesn’t seem to be the case at all. According to Ning chief executive Jay Rosenthal, the average monthly recurring revenue per account is between $3 and $50 per year. This equates to $318 per year per account or $15.9 million in yearly revenue. According to Taylor Buley of Forbes, “an impressive $11.1 million or around 70% can be attributed to Ning’s recent moves.”

Ning has had a hard road this year. Chief executive Gina Bianchini exited suddenly just five months ago. In addition to cutting off free users, Ning also cut their staff by 40% since they no longer needed to support all of those free users. They have had to make difficult decisions but, if they can weather the storm, they will become a great tech turn-around story. Regardless of their fate, they will remain an important example in the merits of freemium.

Note: This article erroneously cited Bloomberg as a source. This has been corrected to Taylor Buley of Forbes.