Ash K. Gilpin

A company called jaxtr, which launches in private beta today, allows users to connect their personal phone to their digital personality.

Jaxr is a widget that users can put into their social networking sites or blogs. When someone has a jaxtr widget, it means you can call them in real-time. Jaxtr members assign a specific number to their widget. 

When a caller sees that widget, they can click it and jaxtr will ask them for their own phone number. The caller’s phone will ring, and when the caller picks up, jaxtr will ring the recipient who originated the widget. If the recipient was not available, jaxtr will notify them that they have a voicemail that they can access by calling into their jaxt service.

Fortunately, jaxtr never discloses the call recipient’s phone number so you can install a widget without ever exposing personal information. Users can also block callers or specify on a per-caller basis which callers can reach them live and which get routed to voice mail. The service is free but local phone rates apply.

With the launch of jaxtr’s beta, the company also announced that LinkedIn co-founder Konstantin Guericke has joined the company as chief executive officer.

“There is nothing less satisfying than creating a social network page or blog and not getting a response,” said Guericke. “Social networks are a catalyst for people to meet, and jaxtr ‘jacks up’ the power of networks to help users make new connections. By putting a widget on their social network page or blog, jaxtr users can hear from callers worldwide on their existing landline or mobile phone.”

To request a beta membership, visit jaxtr’s Web site.

Microsoft Corp. will share a part of its advertising revenues from its search engine with users, the company’s chairman Bill Gates said in a panel discussion on an Indian television channel.

Gates said that search engines like Google Inc. get their revenues from advertising because people use these search engines. “Google’s business model is not based on free software,” Gates said. “Their business model is based on advertisements from which they make a lot of money.”

But they don’t share these advertising revenues with the end users who help them get the revenue, Gates said. “Google keeps all of the money with itself,” he added.

(Through its AdSense program, Google does share advertising revenue with Web site publishers who carry ads that Google sells to advertisers.)

In its bid to share revenues with users, Microsoft may give free software or even cash to users, said Gates, who did not discuss further details.

Socialtext, a corporate wiki tool, released Socialtext Unplugged today at the LeWeb3 conference in Paris. It is an unplug icon that lets users work on their wiki even when they are not connected to the Internet.

While still online, users can click the blue Unplug icon, which will then download a selection of wiki pages so that those pages become available offline. Once a user comes back online, the changes will be automatically uploaded.

“The blue Unplugged icon is similar to an RSS icon, which signals to a user there is a different way to use the content outside the browser. In this case, to use the content offline,” wrote Ross Mayfield, CEO of Socialtext, in his blog.

Socialtext Unplugged is an application within a single HTML file. When the Unplug icon is activated, it downloads pages as a Zip file, although re-synching occurs through Socialtext’s Wiki Web Services.

Google has added some new layers to Google Earth. The new layers are part of what is now called the “Geographic Web.”

The Geographic Web is a mashup of content from Wikipedia, the Google Earth Community, and Panoramio, a geographical photo sharing site. As you zoom into a specific location, you can see place marks of points of interest, user-generated photos, and selected Wikipedia articles. Hopefully it will remain uncluttered as content fills in but it appears that Google is only using select information in the Geographic Web from the three user-generated feeds.

There has been some mention on the internet about how AGLOCO’s upcoming Viewbar is spyware. AGLOCO’s chief internet privacy officer recently discussed at length about these comments, a couple of which we want to reiterate here:

Spyware entails the following characteristics: 1) It’s installed without your permission; 2) It surreptitiously tracks you; 3) it is difficult if not impossible to turn off or remove; and, 4) it sends your information to an unknown and untrustworthy entity where you have no control over what happens to it.

Simply put, AGLOCO’s Viewbar does none of the above. Why?

1) You have to actively install the Viewbar; 2) You have to turn it on in order for it to track your surfing habits and earn your hours; 3) You can easily turn it off and uninstall it at will; and, 4) your info is backed up by perhaps the best Privacy Policy out on the net, which gives you explicit information about what happens with your data and how you can delete it from our system if you desire.

There are a lot of questions about when the Viewbar will be released. The Viewbar is currently in closed beta testing to make absolutely sure that it is fully functioning before its release to all Members. However, it will be released to people in the order they have signed up, so the earlier your referrals sign up the earlier you will start earning when the Viewbar is released. So best to have your friends sign up early

Give AGLOCO a try, you can sign up here - it’s completely FREE.

There is word on the street that Steve Jobs will announce some sort of partnership with TiVo at the next MacWorld.

Rumors usually get pretty crazy around MacWorld time. During last year’s Intel announcement, it was rumored that all press in attendance would get new notebooks but that didn’t happen. This one is probably just a rumor but if we think along the lines of iTV on its way, then it wouldn’t be a bad idea. PVRWire thinks that a partnership is highly unlikely but a licensing deal may be a possibility. TiVo has brand name recognition but declining market share. Apple has undeniable power, especially considering the amount of movies they’ve been able to sell for Disney on iTunes, but they have absolutely zero footing in the television market. They need each other. Problem is, Apple doesn’t often admit to needing anything or anyone.

ValueClick is now going to be offering a  new in-stream video product, launching tomorrow, that will serve video ads to your site/blog. Looks like this is ValueClicks’ answer to Google’s video ads.  Here’s what ValueClick had to say:

“Our vision is nothing short of creating the largest and most reliable video ad network anywhere and we look forward to partnering with users to take full advantage of this exciting new opportunity.”

You can watch a video presentation of ValueClick’s new service here.

The new AskCity product, which combines Ask.com’s existing maps product (overhauled last February) with deep local content (information, reviews, etc.) and very good search, might just be my new go to source for maps and local business information.

The reason that AskCity has such good content is that they’ve taken it from CitySearch, another service owned by parent company IAC. CitySearch has ten years of local content, and that is now deeply integrated with Ask’s maps product.

Key categories are Businesses and Services, Events, Movies, and Maps & Directions. The three pane interface allows users to conduct multiple searches, revise itineraries, create multi-point driving or walking directions (only Yahoo and Ask offer multi-point directions). Restaurant reservations are linked via OpenTable, event tickets can be purchased through Ticketmaster (another IAC property) and soon they will integrate movie ticket purchases through Fandango. Searches can be refined by neighborhood, cuisine or movie genre.

Ask Users can also pin items (events, places) onto a map, draw their own notes on the map, and send a permalink to the customized map to friends for printing or for their comments.

This is an update to my orginal AGLOCO post. 

No Spyware In The Viewbar

AGLOCO Viewbar will have absolutely no spyware. The Viewbar tracks your Internet surfing and serves advertising based on the web page you’re visiting. Everything the Viewbar tracks will be spelled out in the privacy statement. This is really nothing new. Many other toolbars, like Google’s, already track surfing habits. In addition, the Viewbar will offer privacy and phishing protection and an uninstaller should you wish to remove it for any reasons.

1 Hour Of Surf Time = 1 AGLOCO Share

In the beginning of this program, AGLOCO will be rewarding members with shares of the company. 1 hour of surfing time equals 1 share of the company. Members will be able to accumulate 5 shares per month based on the current limits. Members will get 0.25 shares per hour for people in their network. How much will those shares be worth? Maybe zero, maybe millions. It really depends on how fast the network grows and how well management handles this growth.

As AGLOCO starts to earn income from the Viewbar, members will be able to trade their hours for cash as well as shares. The amount per hour will be adjusted periodically to reflect income earned and company net worth. After a successful IPO, surf hours will mostly trade for cash, but shares will still be available. However, don’t expect to get 1 share per hour at that time.

Personally, I am hoping AGLOCO grows like crazy and attracts the attention of the big boys (Google, Yahoo, AOL, etc). Instead of doing an IPO, the company will be like YouTube, and get bought out. However, unlike the YouTube deal, the AGLOCO members will make big money on it. YouTube got huge because of their user base, yet the users got nothing of the $1.65 billion that Google paid.

Give it a try, you can sign up here - it’s completely FREE.

Mitsubishi and big manufacturers are promoting a technical standard that’s expected to greatly expand the color palette on televisions.

The standard, xvYCC, is meant to update the televised color spectrum for the Digital Age. The current standard, BT.709-5, defines the ranges of reds, greens and blues that TV’s can display. The new standard will broaden the range of colors, adding shades of cyan or bright green, which should lead to more natural-looking colors.

“You’ll be able to see richer and more colors,” Vik Murty, senior manager of product marketing at Mitsubishi Digital Electronics America, said during a presentation Wednesday at audio and entertainment tech specialist Dolby Laboratories in San Francisco. “This opens a new set of colors that no one has ever seen on a TV before.”

The current standard works for most televisions, but it constrains the capabilities of LCD televisions with light-emitting diode (LED) backlights and rear-projection TV’s with digital light-processing technology, Murty said.

Mitsubishi has plans to incorporate the standard into TV’s beginning in April of 2007. Broadcasters are also starting to build xvYCC-compliant systems so they can deliver programming that takes advantage of the standard. Others are working on it too: Sony showed off small screens with the technology earlier this year.

Mitsubishi also plans to come out with a TV that uses lasers, rather than lightbulbs or LEDs, as a light source in late 2007, he added.

The new standard will further be enhanced by Deep Color, an existing technology that smoothes out the fine gradients between shades of colors. In some older digital TV’s, viewers can see faint bands in a color field as the colors get lighter or darker. In a TV with Deep Color, the bands disappear, and images in shadows become clearer.

The acronym xvYCC is a rough equivalent for the standard more formally called Extended YCC Colorimetry for Video Applications. The standard is governed by the International Electrotechnical Commission.