Gadgetell | Tech News, Reviews, and Interesting Things

In private beta testing mode since January, the England-based ProofHQ has just opened it’s program up to the the public. What makes it so appealing to so many is the obvious allowance for collaboration. ProofHQ makes this simple with the use of several formats on the web. Blogs, social media applications...users are able to comment and give feedback on a project that can be seen by anyone working on it by using embeddable objects.

There is no cost for this new personal version, unless you want to upgrade to a more advanced package that offers more storage.  The free package only allows for five proofs a months (50 megabytes of storage), and the upgrades run anywhere from $29 to $99 a month. However, you can get a feel for it to see what you think by taking advantage of their 14 day free trial offer. It is both PC and Mac compatible. 

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Once again, the Web works its magic in mysterious ways. I had just completed posting a comment on a favorite blog - and yes, I signed my real name - when I read about a discussion at a Digital Hollywood conference that focused on Internet comments.

The man in charge of the Washington Post’s online division told the audience he’d like to see technology ride to the rescue to get rid of trolls and flame-throwing commenters on the newspaper’s blogs. Jim Brady was describing the aftermath of what happened two years ago when the newspaper’s ombudsman erred on a political story. Hundreds of commenters high on conspiracy theory fumes blasted the website, and many were very nasty, so Brady shut down all comments. The resulting furor made its way to other websites and forums, and many there accused him of trampling on free speech.

On the contrary, says Brady. He just wants a civil discussion, and anonymity doesn’t help the cause. Maybe some form of identity authorization - credit cards? drivers licenses? - would do the trick, he argued:

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It looks like another web 2.0 product has emerged from the darkness, they seem to be coming out of nowhere with various different ideas and solutions for getting attention of the buzz world. You’ve all heard of fantasy football and probably more recently fantasy politics. Now there is fantasy blog share trading from BlogShares, you get fake money to trade shares of various blogs across the network. It has the entire atmosphere of a self contained little community about trading shares of blogs.

So far there doesn’t look to be a whole lot to it except the bare bones idea of holding shares of blogs and getting bloggers to register various blogs in order for them to have a large directory of blogs as well as a medium to have the top 100 blogs (and more) based on share price.

It is a pretty ingenious way to get people to register their favorite blogs though, it seems like it is mostly about marketing on the back end and on the front end gives bloggers a place to talk and live there bloginess (I coined the term blogginess, remember that) ideals.

Although it appears they are working towards reasons to have shares of a blog that make a little more sense there is a bit of a hierarchy to the web site that gives the bloggers that visit a reason to compete between themselves and not just web sites competing for the number one spot.

The web site has karma points that you get from suggesting web sites, categorizing web sites and other wise feeding them with marketing data. They have yet to have a way to spend your chips and karma points that really make any sense. But if you are a competitive person it gives you a place to be just that in the blogging community.

We just finished telling you how to get podcasts on the go and now I am going to followup with blogging on the go...all from Nokia.

Without downloading or installing any applications, Globe customers can upload photos and video clips directly from their Nokia Nseries device to G-Blogs. The first devices to support this feature are the Nokia N93 and Nokia N73 multimedia computers.

Globe customers can also post entries to G-Blogs directly through Nokia Lifeblog. Nokia Lifeblog is a unique collection and storage solution for personal multimedia content, where, with the push of a button, content from a Nokia handset can conveniently be transferred to a compatible PC or to an online blog. Nokia Lifeblog is available in all Nokia Nseries devices and other Nokia devices such as the Nokia 3230, Nokia 7610, Nokia 6680, Nokia 6681, Nokia 6630 and Nokia 6260.

It’s easy to create and post your videos online at YouTube, GoolgeVideo and others, so why don’t you give it a shot. Internet Video Magazine announced the launch of new “Make a Net Video” and “Free Video Tools” guides which make it easy for anyone to create and upload their own personal videos, movies and video blogs to free online video hosting services like YouTube, OneTrueMedia, MySpace, ViralFlix, GoogleVideo and StreamLoad.

Targeted to beginners, students, and families, Internet Video Magazine provides easy to understand how to guides for all aspects of web video - from how to shoot your video, to how to edit and prepare it for the web by using free software, and to how to upload and post it. This includes a list of free or inexpensive sites for hosting the videos and movies. You don’t need to spend hundreds of dollars on special video editing software or tools, most computers already come with the software bundled inside (Windows comes with MovieMaker, Apples come with iMovie). Both are very powerful but easy to master programs that make it possible for almost anyone to create personal movies that can be posted online.

Now it’s your turn [Internet video magazine]

Forget about MySpace, Facebook, and Friendster (oh you already forgot about them didn’t you), ifbyphone is the first mobile phone, voice based, social network. ifbyphone is a one stop destination for information, applications and entertainment, all by voice without ever needing to touch a keypad. By dialing one simple number, you can access their personalized news, weather, sports, email, notepad, stocks, games (poker, blackjack, single and multi-player trivia), chat (both public chat and Voplace, like personal voice blogs), wake up and reminder calls, rss feeds and blogs. ifbyphone uses VoiceXML, automatic speech recognition and text to speech technologies to provide you the information you want and need.  It is accessible anytime, anyplace with just a simple phone.

[Thanks Rocky]

Apple, the company that has sold itself as the pure alternative to big business (specifically Microsoft), will be adding graphic ads to iTunes to increase their revenue stream. The introduction of ads could be the first step to allowing ads in other content areas or on iPods. Apple CEO Steve Jobs has supported the idea of ad-supported podcasts, so adding a visual component to the existing audio ads isn’t much of a stretch.

While users typically don’t tend to mind today’s advertising tactics (everyone you know is using MSN, Google, and are reading blogs), adding ads to a service that was previously pure (iTunes) or when you have your headphones in and are trying to unplug from the world (iPod/MP3 player) doesn’t typically fair well with consumers.

That may be why Apple’s current plans call for the ads to appear only in the lower-left corner of the iTunes library while users listen to podcasts from their computers rather than from portable devices. But it’s a big step for the service, which has so far limited ad intrusions to audio spots embedded in some of the podcasts offered via iTunes. ESPN Radio, which supplies some of iTunes’ most popular ad-supported sports podcasts, is working with the service on the new advertising offering.

For now, the TV networks are making money from iTunes’ ad-free model, charging viewers $1.99 to download an episode of a show. J.P. Morgan analyst Spencer Wang estimates the networks make $1.44 per iTunes sale compared to 57 cents per viewer in ad revenue for every episode aired on broadcast TV. Even still these networks are testing their own ad avenues. ABC is going to offer free versions of several of the same shows it sells on iTunes on its own site with ads that can’t be skipped. NBC will launch free original Webisodes this summer of its hit “The Office.” AOL’s In2TV plans to offer free, ad-supported original fare and just signed a distribution deal with A&E Network.

Not only does iTunes face distribution from content owners’ sites, it will soon face competition from other digital download sites. Amazon has announced it will enter the game, and MTV is weeks away from the Beta test of Urge, the digital media service it created with Microsoft.

I guess it all comes down to whether consumers prefer to pay for convenience and portability or just want free content but whenever they can get it.

Read [Ad Age]