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(Credit:
Redlasso.com)

RedLasso, which announced the closure in a statement on Friday, recorded TV shows and then indexed clips so users could find, pull, and embed them on other Web sites. They did so without permission. The company had suggested that it was in talks to obtain licenses. RedLasso will keep operating its Radio To Web service, which allows radio stations to search and upload their content to their own Web site.

In May, NBC Universal flatly denied that it had any affiliation with RedLasso when the entertainment company sent a letter accusing RedLasso of “building a business based on the unauthorized syndication of” the content owners’ shows.

Not when they are giving their content away free, at sites like Hulu, the video site created by NBC Universal and News Corp. Anyone can go to Hulu and grab embed code for feature films and many NBC Universal shows without violating the law.

RedLasso has suspended access to its video search-and-clipping site two days after NBC Universal and Fox filed a copyright suit against the company.

The era of companies following in YouTube’s shoes is over. No more are the studios going to sit back and allow tech start-ups to use their content to grab eyeballs and then negotiate terms later.

File this one under inevitable.

“We are very disappointed in the actions of select networks,” RedLasso said in a statement. “We believe we have always acted within the law and have been respectful of the networks’ rights. Unfortunately, they have forced our hand.”

Deep down, Google has also upgraded how the browser handles Javasript. Gone are the days when Java applets simply gave you dancing babies on a Web page. Today we’re running robust applications.

In this podcast, Hoffman offers what he thinks Google did right with Chrome, and what could be trouble down the road.

There is, however, innovation.

Tabs are arrayed atop the browser instead of in the traditional toolbar. And users can drag and drop the tabs on the desktop outside the browser. There is also a way to make an icon for GMail and Google Calendar on your desktop.

Google has entered the browser space. Chrome, its browser still in beta, is based on the open source Webkit project. Some will recognize Webkit as the foundation for another browser, Apple
Safari. But Chrome also borrows heavily from Mozilla
Firefox and Microsoft Internet Explorer, giving this new browser an old and familiar feel.

Joining CNET News’ Robert Vamosi this week is Billy Hoffman, manager of HP’s Web security group. Hoffman, along with Bryan Sullivan, also co-authored AJAX Security.

Listen now:

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“While still depressed on a year-over-year basis, consumers are showing some signs of confidence as the summer closes,” the report said. Although mean expectations that the economy will be better off in the next 12 months than it is today increased only marginally from last month, there was more confidence related to the job market and personal financial health.

Both the CEA-CNET Index of Consumer Expectations (ICE), which measures consumer expectations about the broader economy, and the CEA-CNET Index of Consumer Technology Expectations (ICTE), which gauges consumer expectations about technology spending, showed rises for the month of August.

The ICE hit 165.5 points in August, in a range of 100 to 300 points, a rise of more than 3 points from its record low in July and the highest point it has reached since March. However, the index remains 9 points below the level reported a year ago.

The survey data, which is published monthly on the fourth Tuesday of every month, are collected by calling 1,000 respondents who are randomly selected. The data are weighted to be representative of the U.S. population.

The ICTE reached 84.4 points in August, in a range of 0 to 200 points, up nearly 4 points from July, marking the third consecutive month it has risen and the highest level it has reached since February. The August level is also the first year-over-year increase since the data began getting tracked by CEA and CNET in January 2007.

(Credit:
CEA-CNET )

Mean expectations consumers had for spending more on consumer technology was at the highest level in five months, the report said.

U.S. consumers are feeling more confident about the economy than they were last month and continue to plan to spend more on technology in the coming 12 months, according to two surveys conducted by the Consumer Electronics Association and CNET and released on Tuesday.

The underappreciated Web spreadsheet EditGrid is getting a useful and cool new feature: built-in lookups to online resources. For example, if you want your online spreadsheet to display the current stock price of a company, or maybe its site’s Alexa rank, you can now easily code that into your formulas.

EditGrid has a new collection of functions that pull live data from various online sources.

Other functions give you data from the CIA World Factbook (natural gas reserves in Thailand, anyone?), baseball stats via Strikeiron, TechCrunch’s Crunchbase company database, and other interesting info. If you want to get fancy, there are also functions to pull data straight from Web pages.

All the data you pull in from these functions can serve as input to other formulas, which opens up interesting analysis possibilities. Say you’re trying to get a read on a start-up you’re thinking of investing in, and efficiency in getting eyeballs to the site matters to you. A simple formula of monthly page views (from Compete) and number of employees (from Crunchbase) might do that for you. Assuming you trust those data sources, of course.

I did find the menu of data sources a bit limiting outside the realms of financial information and Web analytics, but the concept of adding online data sources directly into a spreadsheet’s function library is spot on, and EditGrid spokespeople confirm that more sources will added to the lineup shortly. I hope EditGrid also opens up the application programming interface so people at other sites can mash their online data into the EditGrid libraries.

Previous review: EditGrid: A nice competitor to Google Spreadsheets.

Google Docs has a subset of these functions, but not the breadth of data that EditGrid now offers.

Unlike Good OS and its forthcoming Linux-based Cloud OS, which is meant to operate alongside Windows on Netbooks, Krim intends to provide Jolicloud as a download direct to users that would replace your current Netbook OS–Windows XP or another flavor of Linux.

TechCrunch likens the look of Jolicloud to that of the
iPhone and reports that the OS will support touch screens. TechCrunch also reports that a third-party application platform is planned.

Former Netvibes CEO Tariq Krim has his sights set on Netbooks. According to TechCrunch, Krim will launch a Linux-based OS for Netbooks next year called Jolicloud.

The Jolicloud site is light on information, though you can leave your e-mail to join its beta program.

Within the coming weeks, it will be clear whether such action is needed. The DOJ and a multi-state task force are rushing to come to a conclusion on whether they will oppose the Yahoo-Google search advertising deal, which the companies hope to launch by mid-October. Earlier this month, the DOJ hired antitrust litigator Sandy Litvack as a consultant in its networking and technology unit. Litvack was hired to weigh whether the DOJ’s case could be won at trial, say sources.

• Prohibit Google and Yahoo from setting minimum bid or reserve prices.

In sizing up the four key recommendations issued by the AAI, one source familiar with the deal noted the agreement between the two companies involves only North America, making the first suggested workaround irrelevant.

The AAI, however, further noted:

• Prohibit Yahoo from using Google ads on organic search results outside North America and on any third-party Web sites.

The pro-competitive potential of the arrangement depends on Yahoo remaining in paid search.

And finally, the fourth recommendation is one that, in essence, prohibits allowing volume incentives with higher revenues. But the source noted such practices are common in a number of industries and are not anticompetitive.

The group, which tends to be viewed as pro-antitrust enforcement, took a slightly different view on the Yahoo-Google deal and did not come out with a blanket opposition to the agreement. The group, however, offered up several recommendations to regulators on how the Yahoo and Google agreement should be retooled:

“While we disagree with AAI’s conclusions, it is noteworthy that even a group that has opposed most deals acknowledges the pro-competitive elements of our agreement with Yahoo. We believe strongly that this deal is good for competition and will benefit advertisers, Web site publishers, and consumers,” according to a statement from Google.

The government cannot compel Yahoo to do this, however, the government can insist on legally enforceable requirements that will ensure that Yahoo has an incentive to continue to develop.

Meanwhile, the American Antitrust Institute, a nonprofit think tank, announced Tuesday that the Yahoo-Google deal should be viewed as “presumptively anticompetitive” but may also contain some possible pro-competitive benefits. The group released a white paper on the topic.

• Require the share of revenue that Yahoo receives from each click be constant, (for example), that the agreement does not reward Yahoo with a higher share of revenue for using more Google ads.

Federal antitrust regulators have clearly laid out their concerns to Yahoo and Google regarding their controversial search advertising agreement, but discussions of potential remedies have yet to come up, according to a source familiar with the discussions.

The AAI offered up four key recommendations:

A spokeswoman for the DOJ declined to comment, other than to note the investigation is ongoing.

• Prohibit Yahoo from using Google ads when Yahoo has a sufficient number of ads of its own to fill the white space surrounding an organic search result on Yahoo’s site.

The AAI also found that the publicly available data, including briefings provided by Yahoo and Google, do not rebut the concerns that the alliance as proposed is anticompetitive.

Antitrust regulators with the Department of Justice have largely narrowed their concerns into two buckets, one centering on the potential affect on advertising pricing in the short run and to what extent there would be a negative impact on the industry, and the second being will the agreement eventually lead to Yahoo exiting the search advertising business altogether, the source noted.

Yahoo made a similar statement, saying, “We believe strongly that this agreement will strengthen Yahoo’s competitive position in online advertising and will help to drive a more robust, higher quality Yahoo marketplace for our advertisers, publishers, and users.”

Currently, the parties are discussing those concerns, but the conversations have not yet migrated to a point where the DOJ is saying they are illegal and the agency is contemplating filing a lawsuit to block the partnership, the source said.

But a spokesman for the AAI noted the organization is not married to its bullet points but wanted to illustrate some ways the companies could mitigate potential antitrust concerns.

In most cases, once the DOJ indicates it may file a lawsuit, the agency leaves it up to the companies to suggest possible remedies to mitigate regulators’ concerns, said the source.
Yahoo and Google have not offered up any potential remedies to mitigate the DOJ’s concerns, according to the source.

And in prohibiting a minimum bid, or reserve price, the issue it could create may be one where cheap, irrelevant ads begin showing up on search pages, since the bar would be set low, added the source.

But Google and Yahoo differ on the AAI’s conclusions that the deal would be anticompetitive without instituting the organization’s recommended changes.

The third recommendation would require the DOJ to monitor Yahoo as to whether its ad inventory was low enough to warrant allowing Google to place its ads on its search pages–a move that would amount to micromanaging for the agency, said the source.

Such concerns would arise in any case where the top two firms in a highly concentrated market reach an agreement that potentially gives the dominant firm a market share in excess of 90 percent. The parties’ statements of good intent cannot be relied upon to override the economic incentives that may be generated by this agreement to engage in what may turn out to be anticompetitive conduct.

Yes, the company must forfeit some community involvement in these bits, as MySQL’s Marten Mickos has suggested MySQL may consider, but that’s a considered, prudent risk.

However you choose to do it, you need to be looking three to four years out when building your open-source business, and providing for a life after a pure support model. That is, if you want to deliver the returns your investors expect.

I like the way that SugarCRM, Zimbra, and others have been settling this question. In SugarCRM’s case, you pay to scale true enterprise use. There is some technology that only a company with serious, large-scale production plans needs to run your software. It is fair to make such technology (e.g., clustering) available only to paid subscribers. Doing so doesn’t slow down their ability to trial your software.

In Zimbra’s case, if you want to connect it with proprietary software, you pay. Or if you want advanced administration features, you pay. Both seem like fair policies (and fair trade-offs) to me.

In my own experience, I believe the first thing to offer after the open-source core project is an add-on “network” that provides administration, facilitated deployment, and perhaps the first hint of commercial extensions. It’s a service that complements the code and, while it may help make deployment easier, deployment is not dependent on it.

But it’s also inefficient to rely on faith and goodwill to reap customers later in a company’s growth and revenue trajectory. There must be a compelling reason to buy. This is where many in the open-source world lose their way. But what should that reason be? That is the nettlesome question.

“A pure service business is not particularly defensible,” says [Red Hat CEO Jim] Whitehurst. “Some open-source companies have not truly figured that out.” If the open-source movement, now in its second decade, is to realize its promise for vendors and investors, more of its purveyors will need to get the message soon.

Support, as Jim Whitehurst suggests, is not a compelling enough argument for most would-be buyers.

BusinessWeek is asking an important question of open-source companies: despite the rapid growth of some open-source businesses (e.g., Red Hat, Novell Suse, Alfresco, SugarCRM, and others), it’s still very much an open question as to whether open source can deliver outsized returns for investors.

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Savio Rodrigues of IBM has been beating this drum for some time, suggesting that pure open-source business models have a built-in glass ceiling. While I think this is a bit overstated, I 100 percent concur that any business must figure out a “proprietary” differentiator that tells a customer, “This is why you buy from me rather than my competitor, and rather than taking it from me for free.”

This is why I’ve argued for a phased approach to open source. It’s inefficient to try to “reap” every prospective customer in the early stages of a business: making the code open source lets a company sow a wide field of prospective buyers.

BusinessWeek calls out Red Hat as headed for trouble, but I don’t see that. I think the company has already figured out considerable proprietary value, which model it simply needs to accentuate by adding more and more value higher up the stack, value that would-be buyers can’t have for free–at least not in the same form as the code Red Hat gives away.

A time to reap, a time to sow. Early on, you want as much access to your product as possible, as the intent is to drive adoption first, then revenue. It is critical, however, to not paint yourself into a corner wherein you have little option to provide commercial extensions. The code and company policy must be malleable to this end, even if you ultimately decide not to do it.

But he needs to hurry before his organization grows lazy in the expectation that “Mark will provide.” Canonical should start funding itself, rather than relying on Shuttleworth. It will be a better organization as it seeks self-sufficiency. Talking to Shuttleworth, it’s clear that he can handle the business aspect of Canonical in spades. He just needs to start doing so.

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I personally believe Canonical would be the better for taking a hard-headed approach to the business side of Ubuntu, and the sooner the better. Shuttleworth, of course, has this in mind with his push for cloud services to generate revenue around Ubuntu, rather than directly from Ubuntu.

On the negative side, it is profit and the thirst for it that tends to separate great companies from paltry ones. Yes, the quest for revenue and profit can turn good companies into shady ones–witness Microsoft’s unlawful exercise of monopoly power for many years–but on balance the quest for profitability and self-sustainability tends to force companies to be pragmatic and build to suit near-term needs, not long-term aspirations.

On the positive side, CEO Mark Shuttleworth is able to run Canonical toward mass adoption, not mass monetization. This means he can avoid trade-offs that might help the Canonical business but hurt the Ubuntu Linux distribution.

On Monday, I noted that Ubuntu’s revenue is rising significantly, and that this success is beginning to cut into Microsoft’s OEM licensing business.

Tuesday there is a chorus of voices calling out that Canonical is not cash-flow positive, with CNET reporting that profits are years away.

Is this cause of optimism or concern?

Grab files from Mesh on any mobile device, including the iPhone. But sending them to your cloud storage requires a Windows Mobile or Symbian handset.

Microsoft’s solution may not be as developed as Apple’s (yet), but it will be far more open with eventual support for a multitude of devices with no cost for the end user. Microsoft is expected to unveil a development platform later this year that should let application creators tie in their services for file access and notifications.

Late last week Microsoft quietly released an update to its Live Mesh product to support mobile access. From your phone’s Web browser you can access the service via m.mesh.com. If you’re on a Windows Mobile device, or any other phone that supports file system access you can upload files over the Web to your Live Mesh storage–something that’s helpful for things like photos taken from your phone’s digital camera.

(Credit:
CNET Networks / Josh Lowensohn)

In addition to the file browser, the mobile version of Mesh includes the same news feed functionality that lets you track all the changes to stored files. Missing is an installable client, which is on the horizon and will provide real-time file changes and deeper system integration on supported handsets.

Mesh opened up to everyone late last week. Microsoft’s vision of creating a syncing tool for anyone echos Apple’s latest online subscription service, MobileMe. The key difference is in price and device support with Apple’s solution costing $99 a year and offering deep integration with the
iPhone. Incidentally, earlier on Monday, blog LiveSide also got their hands on a pre-beta version of the upcoming
Mac client of Live Mesh which has Finder integration but no remote desktop support unlike its Windows cousin.

(Credit:
FluffFriends)

FluffFriends makes money through a virtual currency that translates to real cash, with which members purchase items to spruce up their pets. A release from the Social Gaming Network said that since January, the game makes an average of 192 percent more revenue per paid player, and members spend an average of 143 percent more per transaction.

I named him Bill Gates.

Of note: FluffFriends was actually created by a Google engineer, Mike Sego.

The virtual-pet application built on Facebook’s platform, which once permitted me to display a penguin named Bill Gates on my profile and invite friends to give him a nice hug, has officially been acquired by the Social Gaming Network. A price was not disclosed.

It’s the M&A deal of the century: FluffFriends got bought!

Last month, the Social Gaming Network announced funding from Amazon.com founder Jeff Bezos’ investment firm. It was already backed by $15 million in a round led by Greylock Partners.