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World Cup is an R&D project for Lycos

Almost nine months ago, the CEO of Lycos, Inc. said he had plans to turn his company around and eventually take it public.  One strategy would be to earn money allowing people to upload home-made video. Back then, few people had heard of YouTube.com, but what Alfred Tolle described sounded a bit like what YouTube is today.  Except that it accepts files.  Lycos, Tolle said, would provide audio and video editing and production tools for people to produce their programming online.

Tomorrow, when FIFA World Cup kicks off in Germany (sorry!), Tolle's company will have four "embedded" reporters who will be the focus of an effort by Lycos to do more than report scores and show highlights.  "They will be testing new technologies, kind of an 'alpha' platform, for products to be introduced in the next 3 to 4 months," explained Brian Kalinowski, COO of the Waltham, Mass.-based company.

Their job is to produce daily vignettes, "with a lighthearted and satirical approach to the culture of World Cup," Kalinowski said.  "They will also be testing techniques to let us deliver high-quality, even high-definition video from our platform, which consumers may eventually be able to use to distribute and monetize their content." 

Listen to comments from Kalinowski.

Worldcup.Lycos.com, beginning tomorrow morning, will be hard-core sports coverage.  Lycos plans to also have slide shows, news, blogs and also IPTV Web casts from the game venues.  Cup-related content from Japan, China and Korea will also be offered.

Last September, Tolle said in an interview having the technology was just the first step.  "I need partnerships and alliances to get the word out," hinting also at acquisitions to build Lycos' brand.  "We need to position ourselves as the content destination for creators and consumers," he continued. "I would like to give people the opportunity to share in advertising revenue we would get from people watching and listening."

In light of YouTube.com, Tolle clearly saw the wave before many other people.  His idea, however, includes something extra, a profit incentive.

So, visit the World Cup site for the games. But stay for the technology and a clue to Lycos' next move.

Windows Vista, come and get it

Here it is.  Or at least that's where it's supposed to be.  Traffic's heavy this morning, do you may have to wait for Windows Vista Beta 2, Microsoft's latest and greatest operating system.   Intended for tech pros and IT folks, the company says it's also "available to technology enthusiasts that want to install and test a copy of Windows Vista Beta 2." The new OS build is available in three languages: English, German, and Japanese. 

Make sure you run Windows Vista Upgrade Advisor, a program that tells you whether your PC is man enough to run the software.  My two-year-old Vaio :(  Maybe I'm not either.

Meanwhile, new from the labs of Google, a terrific extension for the Firefox browser.  If, like me, you use both a laptop and a desktop, this little program will help you keep the same settings – bookmarks, history, persistent cookies, and saved passwords on each PC.  It slows the start-up of Firefox a bit, checking for changes you may have made on the other computer, but it's a dandy, simple add-in.  It works.

Google Spreadsheet - it's not about Microsoft

The critical point about Google Spreadsheet is not that it threatens Microsoft's Excel sales.  It is the continuing disruptive impact that free Web-based programs will have on computer users. 

Thanks to Web-based e-mail, word processors, calendars, to do lists, drawing programs, whether I'm working on a Mac or a Windows PC is becoming irrelevant.  This should worry PC makers.  Bundled software becomes less of a selling point when all the programs you want to run, and that your friends run, are out there in cyberspace and don't need to be started from the desktop.

An example.  A famous Mac user declared he is "sick and tired of being a beta tester for Apple."  In the course of a recent Daily Source Code podcast, Adam Curry described how his third Mac had died, within a year.  And how easily he was able to switch over to a much-lighter (and probably cheaper) PC laptop, because he was able to find Web-versions of many of the same services (Gmail, among them), as well as free or shareware analogues of Mac programs for audio processing and file maintenance.

When Google rolls out a new free service, it's a mistake to immediately look to Redmond and say, "Aha! Another attack."  In fact, Google and any developer who's working on Web services are threatening the huge, existing software industry.

It's bigger than Microsoft.

Disclaimer: I own shares of Google.

Mossberg likes a new photo service

Smilebox beats other online photo services by concentrating on design and ease of use.   Two thumbs up from Walt Mossberg in his weekly column.

EBay's influence showing at Skype

Last Christmas, EBay's Skype was selling a $5 package of minutes and a headset through Radio Shack stores.  Now, it's giving notice it's going online with music sales.  And this may just be the start of an all out competition with Apple's iTunes store

Skype's now inked deals with Warner Music and EMI Music Publishing to sell music downloads - just like the other mobile phone services.  (Skype's been selling ring tones for a while.)

EMI says the deal is for "worldwide" license rights.  London's Times says such an arrangement will make it easier for songwriters to get paid than if the license was on a country-by-country basis.

Skype's already got a "Shop" on its Web site.  It's only a matter of time before it competes against the mobile carriers for music sales, too.  The company claims 55 million users, with 150,000 new sign ups every day. Lots of customers who, for instance, might be enticed to try Skype's premium voice mail feature, in exchange for a couple of ring tunes

Phil Wolff at Skype Journal predicted such a move in January, adding Skype's ring tone relationships would lead to music, television, and movie distribution. 

New Internet Explorer beta: Come and get it

This time they mean business.  Not only has Microsoft posted another pre-release version of its  Internet Explorer, inviting techies and plain old consumers to give it a whirl, the company's offering help if it screws up your PC.  Toll free phone support for for consumers in North America, Germany and Japan (although today's release is English-only) ... "to encourage people who usually shy away from beta software to try IE 7," according to the IE Weblog.

By now, we know additional features of IE 7 include tabbed browsing (years AFTER Opera and Firefox did it).  But this new release also promises better access to RSS feeds in the browser itself.  No add-on program, separate Web site, or e-mail client plug-in needed. 

And the closer IE gets us to RSS, the closer it gets us to  Microsoft's support of podcatching. The next version of the Windows Media Player will certainly support podcasts.

The new browser will also let you use Google, or any other search engine, as your default search too.  Hmmm ... MSFT playing nice?

The final IE release is due later this year. Versions of the new beta in Arabic, Finnish, German and Japanese are due for release early next month, the company said.

Download IE Beta 2 

MySpace is setting the pace

Yahoo is embracing Web 2.0 strategies because it's seen the fantastic growth of MySpace.com - and finds it threatening, according to John Bray, an analyst with PhoCusWright.  In a note for clients he pointed out Yahoo is using as much technology as it can to make its services newly compelling.  This includes the about-to-go-live Outlook look-a-like e-mail service.

Yahoo is "clearly seeing the trajectory of page views at MySpace in their rear-view mirror," Bray wrote.  Then he added: "When school starts in fall 2006, MySpace will be the #1 most visited site on the Web."

Yahoo's freshening of its travel options is an example of the company's drive to revamp and integrate its services. Travelers can type ''compare Las Vegas hotels'' in Yahoo Search and see the best hotel prices within the results.  Clicking on prices takes you to FareChase, with the hotels plotted on a dynamic satellite/street level map.  You can also read other travelers' comments and, in a nod to the 'social-networking' mania,  you can review other people's "Trip Plans".

Opera 9 beta released

Opera Software announced the first public Beta of Opera 9. The latest version of this alternative browser includes Widgets, small Web programs running in their own windows which live on users' desktops. It also features support for BitTorrent, a file downloading technology, a content blocker and thumbnail previews of tabbed sites. 

The free download is here.

Janco Associates' data shows Opera has lots of room to grow.

An interview with Memeorandum's founder

Tech.memeorandum.com is a must-read Web site for tech journalists, Net stock analysts, Web company managers, and geeks who want to be in the know.  It is a constantly changing buffet of news headlines from bloggers and pontificators.

Think of it as a real-time  trade publication says its founder, Gabe Rivera.  He quit his day job as a programmer at Intel Corp. because "I imagined this, and I recognized it would require a lot of time and experimentation to build."  He works almost continuously, staying with a friend in Silicon Valley.  He is his only employee.   "The work I need to do is so involved, so hairy, that communicating with other people to make it work would be a big distraction."

Rivera began with two sites.  The other, also launched last September, is Memerandum.com. Its focus is politics.     There is http://www.memeorandum.com/ for politics.  Together they have 10-20,000 daily visitors. 

Many of the headlines that show up on the sites would be unrecognizable to general news consumers.  "Each of these readers are insiders, they are passionate, like the people writing are passionate. It's bloggers writing for their own audience," he said in an interview. Listen to it here.

Because of their sophistication, Rivera thinks sponsors should find them attractive.  "I haven't gotten around to that yet.  It's not my top priority. Maybe it should be," he said.

Rivera's constantly searching Web spiders are now pushing links and content to two other sites, publishing in the same links-a-lot format. Rivera has applied Memorandum's technology to http://www.ballbug.com/ for Major League Baseball and WeSmirch, an "automatic dirt digger."

More Meme- Web sites are in the works, Rivera said.  But not soon.  "They take work," he explained.  "And also they need to have communities of bloggers who talk to each other."

Netvibes adds tabs, RSS previews

One of the slickest Web.20 personal custom home page services has just gotten a lot better. Netvibes.com has added support for multiple pages, so you can drag-and-drop RSS feeds and Web page book marks to create your own "Sports" or "Business" or "Movies" sections.  You can be your own portal-meister.

In an interview, Netvibes founder Tariq Krim said 5,000 people a day have been signing up to create their own pages on the Paris-based service.  "We have more than 1 million now, so we had to go from 'proof of concept' last September to a full-fledged service pretty fast," he said.

Backed with European venture funding, Netvibes sees itself as "a lead generator, not a content retriever," even though most people will use the service to read RSS feeds, e-mail accounts, check calendars and, through a deal with Box.net, even store files online.

Krim marvels how the company has grown and how users from the U.S., Israel, China, and Europe all seem to request the same features.  In development is an investment module which would allow you to "subscribe" to quotes from any stock exchange and even do online trading.  The company's blog previews what's coming. 

Listen to, or download, the interview.