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March marks the month of American Sports

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When it comes to growth in online traffic, American sports like baseball and online gambling related to these games played a big factor for the month of March.

Based on the data from research company comScore, baseball spring training and fantasy team drafts prompted a flood of earnest fans to MLB.com, which jumped 50 percent to 9.8 million visitors.

“American sports factored in prominently for the top gaining categories and properties in March,” said Jack Flanagan, executive vice president of comScore Media Metrix. “The NCAA tournament drove substantial traffic to online gambling sites during the month, while the start of spring training made MLB.com one of the top gaining properties. Both events also contributed to ESPN.com’s surge in the top properties rankings.”

Moreover, the NCAA basketball tournament has lured many gamblers thus gaining 14% increase in the online gambling category. Sportingbet PLC increased 35 percent to 975,000 visitors, UPICKEM.net jumped 174 percent to 396,000 visitors and SportsBetting.com rose 114 percent to 145,000 visitors.

Read the complete study here

Originally posted on April 14, 2008 @ 8:04 pm

Australia – Hawaii undersea cable on the way

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telstra.gifSince a large percentage of Internet traffic in Australia is coming from the U.S., a telco company is now working on a 9,000 kilometer undersea Internet cable connecting Australia and Hawaii.

Telco company Telstra aims to improve the Internet broadband connection with this project. This new cable is claimed to have the power to carry 160,000 high definition TV simultaneously and capacity of 1.28 Terabits per second.

“It’s really crucial for the future – we’re seeing the rate of data transported from the US to Australia and back again doubling every year. Sixty-five per cent of of our internet traffic comes from the US,” said Telstra spokeswoman Kate McKenzie.

Via The Tech Herald

Originally posted on April 10, 2008 @ 12:06 pm

Wal-Mart stands firm on DRM-free music

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wal-mart music downloadsEven though Wal-Mart Music Downloads is not a top destination for millions of music addicts, it can stir the music industry through its Amazon-like campaign for DRM-free MP3s.

The Washington Post reports that the retail giant has dropped MP3s protected by Window DRM, limiting its catalogue to Universal Music Group and EMI artists only. On the other hand, Warner Music Group and Sony BMG have remained adamant on their position about DRM.

When asked about this issue, a Wal-Mart representative replied, “We’ll continue to work with our music partners to further grow our MP3 selection, however, we don’t publicly share details of our ongoing discussions with these partners.”

Originally posted on April 9, 2008 @ 2:01 pm

New media and politics

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vote.gifNew media like blogs, social networking sites and mobile phones are becoming potent tools in politics. It’s very evident in the campaign of U.S. presidential hopeful Barack Obama. Another case in point is the recent election in Malaysia.

The Herald Tribune reports that Malaysian Prime Minister Abdullah Ahmad Badawi has admitted its big mistake of underestimating the power of the Internet. Though his coalition retained power, it failed to snatch the parliamentary majority because they relied heavily on government-controlled traditional media such as TV and newspapers.

On the other hand, the opposition has make the most of the Internet and text messaging to reach out to young voters and discuss the pressing problems in Malaysia like corruption, religious issues, and racial tensions. Through these initiatives, the group has increased its seat in the Parliament.

In case you miss the point, here it is again: Do not underestimate the power of the Internet. Or else…

Originally posted on March 26, 2008 @ 9:16 am

imeem now open to outside developers

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imeem, the 3rd largest social network in the U.S. with 24 million unique monthly visitors, has joined the “openness” bandwagon with the launch of its imeem Media Platform, enabling third-party developers to create new applications related to videos, photos, and music.

Here are some of the things developers can create in this open platform:

  1. Access imeem’s social graph, including users, friends, and associated profile data
  2. Create, edit, and manage new playlists, or access millions of music, video and photo playlists created by imeem users
  3. Search imeem’s media content by keyword, artist, song title, or album name
  4. Ability to favorite media and playlists back to the user’s profile
  5. Access imeem’s recommendation engine and discovery tools

More importantly, imeem will provide OpenSocial support so developers can easily integrate the applications they created for other social networking sites such as MySpace and Hi5.

Originally posted on March 26, 2008 @ 10:33 am