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Google gets into video in China

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XunleiEver heard of Xunlei? Me neither, until rumors emerged on a Google investment in the Chinese video sharing site. $5m might not be such a big deal for the search giant, but Xunlei is branded as one of the fastest growing new ventures online in China so it might prove to be well spent money.

“It’s not YouTube, but it’s close enough,” says Richard Ji, an Internet analyst at Morgan Stanley. “Xunlei is a very interesting company. It’s a leader in video downloading and so this should help Google in the battle with Baidu.”

More on Chinese investments these days in a story over at the New York Times.

Editors Update: Check out 901am China For More Coverage on the Chinese Marketplace

Originally posted on January 6, 2007 @ 3:49 am

Chartreuse tells all, reveals nothing

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ChartreusePrince Campbell, more known as Chartreuse, had a rocket career in the blogosphere. His blog was word and image play, with a touch of video, and it was good. Then he shut it down to start to charge for content at Chartreuse2, which failed miserably as far as I can see.

Campbell vanishes and rumors go around about all kinds of things. Now, from nowhere, he’s back and posting on his original blog saying more or less nothing.

So I hop online just to check my email and see that folks are writing bad things about me.
Not nice.
Here’s the deal.
Howard and I had a 5k accounting difference. I’m right, his people were wrong. I had proof. End of story. Not worth public discourse.

Comments are closed on the post in question. Perhaps that is for the best.

Originally posted on January 5, 2007 @ 4:42 am

Disney slams blogger, forgets about goodwill

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Keep quiet pleaseLost Remote have a post up on a blogger, called Spocko, who criticized a Disney owned radio station for “its ultra-right-wing commentery”. The radio station, KSFO, have branded themselves with The News And Views You Won’t Hear Anywhere Else, which the following quote from Lost Remote sure proves (more over at Spocko’s Brain):

(For example, the hosts demanded that callers mock Islam, called for public hangings of New York Times editor Bill Keller and suggested that a Sears’ Diehard battery be attached to an African-American’s testicles.)

Spocko recorded and published sound clips from the radio show in question, which got the Disney lawyers fired up and landed Spocko host Blogger with cease-and-desist orders. The blog is still up though.

Sure, Spocko is probably breaking the law by putting up audio clips to prove his point, but Disney is making a huge mistake pulling out like this. The negative impact it has on the company for giving room to the radio show hosts’ political incorrect opinions is one thing, but then standing up for them by taking their side is a PR nightmare to say the least. I’m not impressed, but then again Disney hasn’t been giving me good vibes in a long, long time.

Originally posted on January 7, 2007 @ 4:26 am

WordPress.com breaks the 100 million pageviews barrier

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New WordPress.comThe December wrap up post over at WordPress.com tells lots of interesting things, if you’re into WP.com or hosted blogging solutions in general.

December stats: 64k blogs, 68k users, switched themes 359k times, 1.76 million posts, 289k pages, 1 million comments, 3,553 support requests, 393k file uploads, and broke a new record in pageviews, 103 million. (Not counting admin section, images, CSS, RSS feeds, etc.)

The post also includes links to more reading, so head over there if you want to know how December treated WP.com.

Originally posted on January 6, 2007 @ 5:58 am

Google Calendar gains ground

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Google CalendarI’ve been a Google Calendar user for quite some time, being too annoyed with Outlook overall that I switched to an online solution. And I won’t be going back, it’s a great application that Google continues to improve.

TechCrunch have compared Google Calendar to its main competition applications from Yahoo and MSN, and it would seem that Google will be in the lead in the not so distant future. Yahoo is still the biggest one though.

Head over to the TechCrunch post for graphs ‘n stuff.

Originally posted on January 4, 2007 @ 5:59 am