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Continue reading Microsoft Kinect to go on sale in November, somewhere

Microsoft Kinect to go on sale in November, somewhere originally appeared on Engadget on Mon, 14 Jun 2010 04:52:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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MyWeboo is an unique online free service which allows you to manage files on Facebook, Picasa, Flickr, Amazon S3, Photobucket, MySpace and other services in single location. You can add these online services as drives to MyWeboo and upload and download files and photos easily and quickly from its interface. You need to first create a free account with MyWeboo and then authorize the service to access your files and photos.

You can also add your PC to the service by downloading the PC connector tool. With this service, you can access your computer anywhere from the web using the connector. The service allows you to use it as a file explorer for the online services listed in the picture above. Once you have added the service, you can go to MyWebtop and access the files.

You can also monitor your recent activities in the services added to MyWebtop.

Another added feature is that you can also use it as an email client by accessing your email account through POP3. MyWeboo is really a promising web application especially for that fact that it gets all the online tools at one place.

Try MyWeboo

MySpace is one of the popular social networking site and due to its popularity, it is blocked in most of the colleges, schools and offices. Many educational institutions have blocked this site from students and staff because of sharing problems, viruses, and online issues. You can unblock MySpace using variety of methods depending on what is actually being used to block sites.

Steps to unblock MySpace;

1. First you need to check the sites that are blocked on your local computer. For this Open Internet Explorer, select “Tools”, “Internet Options”. Click the “Security” tab and choose “Restricted Sites”. The “Sites” button will become available. Be sure that MySpace is not listed, in case listed, delete it and you will be able to access it.

2. There are many proxy sites available which allow you to comment, reply, view all pages of pictures, send messages, but these proxy sites are pretty dangerous as they can be cause of virus attacks.

3. Remote connection to your home PC- Although this method is a bit difficult to implement and might incur more costs, but definitely worth trying. You can do a remote connection to your home PC connected to Internet and start browsing from there. There are free tools like LogMeIn which allows you to do this.

4. Installing a filter removing program and by this method, bypass the filter that is stopping you from accessing MySpace.com. But be warned that this might cause serious issues when using at school.

MySpace is a popular social networking tool, although many say that with Facebook becoming popular, many have switched to it. Like any other social networking sites, MySpace also has its share of login problems just like any other social networking site. If you are facing login issues with MySpace, here are some simple steps to help you login to MySpace.

1. The default login URL for MySpace is http://www.myspace.com/

2. In case you have forgotten the password, click here to retrieve it.

3. If your account is hacked, you can use the instructions here to retrieve it.

4. To change your password, follow instructions here.

5. If you need to change the email address associated with MySpace, follow these instructions.

More tips on how to solve login issues can be found here.

Last August, MySpace acquired social music service iLike. As part of the deal iLike founders (and twin brothers) Ali Partovi and Hadi Partovi joined MySpace’s executive team, with Hadi becoming SVP of Technology and Ali taking the role of SVP of Business Development. Today, we’ve confirmed that both men will be stepping down from their executive positions at MySpace. Hadi will be leaving the company entirely to pursue opportunities as an advisor and angel investor (as well as work with tech-related non-profits), while Ali will stay on board as a strategic advisor. iLike cofounder Nat Brown remains at MySpace, where he’s head of Mobile.

Reached for comment, MySpace gave us this statement:

MySpace SVP of Technology Hadi Partovi is stepping down to pursue other opportunities. In addition to continuing his work as an advisor and angel investor to various startups, he will be following his passion for education by working directly with technology focused non-profits. Hadi leaves as a valued friend to the company, and we wish him the best in his future endeavors.

This obviously isn’t good news for MySpace. But the iLike deal has actually worked out quite well for the company. iLike is now integrated into Google Search, though a deal that was in the works before MySpace acquired the company. iLike is still the most popular music app on Facebook.  And the iLike team also played an instrumental role in the resurrection of imeem’s playlists and MySpace’s recently upgraded events product.

Still, this continues a string of other recent MySpace departures, including VP and General Manager of Mobile John Faith, SVP User Experience Katie Geminder, ousted CEO Owen Van Natta, and others. Slightshot Labs, a News Corp incubator that works with MySpace, also just saw the departures of President Josh Berman and EVP Strategy and Product Diego Berdakin.

Here’s a video Ali Partovi shot soon after he joined the MySpace executive team last fall, when he showed why he was full of win.

I fully understand that Facebook must be an extremely hard site to design. I mean, it has 400 million users, many of whom use it several times a day. If you make on little change, millions of people are going to freak out, and get confused. For an example of this, see any time Facebook tweaks anything on its site. But saying that a lot of Facebook is a cluttered, complicated mess is an understatement, in my opinion. And that’s why the news today that Facebook has killed off the lite version of its site is disappointing — not because it was great, but because it was better.

When Facebook Lite first debuted back in September (after an accidental preview in the U.S. in August), we hailed it as a return to the simpler roots of Facebook. Gone were the mess of settings, bottom menu bars, and crap applications — the emphasis was almost entirely on the stream, profiles, and events. Since then, Facebook has tweaked its full version to be more Lite-like, including the removal of the ridiculous bottom toolbar, the addition of icon indicators along the top toolbar, and a clearer emphasis on events. To be clear, Facebook proper today looks much, much better than it did a year ago. But some elements are still a mess, such as the ugly comments under feed items. And some continue to get worse, like the headache-inducing privacy settings.

Facebook Lite was not perfect, but I suspect that the main problem with the site was that Facebook made it hard to find. Unless you enabled a toolbar (yes, another damn toolbar) along the top of the site to easily switch back and forth, it was nearly impossible to figure out how to do so. As such, I doubt many people used the version. And because it lacked some features of the main site, you were often required to switch back even if you were using Lite by default (the main reason I didn’t use it all the time).

And the truth is that Facebook Lite was always just a test. It was originally designed, much like Facebook Zero, to be used in places around the world that only had slow Internet connections. The test in the U.S. and the rest of the industrialized world seemed to be an experiment to see how people would react to a slimmed down site with less feature clutter (which is exactly why it was never a so-called “Twitter Killer” despite many labeling it as such). As stated, the service used some of Lite to improve the regular version, but Facebook proper is now still much more like Facebook Bloated rather than Facebook Lite.

Thinking back a few years ago when I started using Facebook over MySpace, it had nothing to do with the social graph (MySpace was much larger at the time), but rather because Facebook looked so much nicer and was simpler to use. Despite MySpace’s attempts to improve over the past few years, Facebook still does look much nicer, but I’m not sure who has the edge in simplicity anymore. It’s a problem all sites face as they continue to grow — yes, even Twitter — how do you keep things simple while adding new features to keep your users engaged?

And again, that’s why the killing of Lite is disappointing. It seemed to suggest that huge sites were at least thinking about a move back towards simplicity. Now, once again, it’s complicated.

I fully understand that Facebook must be an extremely hard site to design. I mean, it has 400 million users, many of whom use it several times a day. If you make on little change, millions of people are going to freak out, and get confused. For an example of this, see any time Facebook tweaks anything on its site. But saying that a lot of Facebook is a cluttered, complicated mess is an understatement, in my opinion. And that’s why the news today that Facebook has killed off the lite version of its site is disappointing — not because it was great, but because it was better.

When Facebook Lite first debuted back in September (after an accidental preview in the U.S. in August), we hailed it as a return to the simpler roots of Facebook. Gone were the mess of settings, bottom menu bars, and crap applications — the emphasis was almost entirely on the stream, profiles, and events. Since then, Facebook has tweaked its full version to be more Lite-like, including the removal of the ridiculous bottom toolbar, the addition of icon indicators along the top toolbar, and a clearer emphasis on events. To be clear, Facebook proper today looks much, much better than it did a year ago. But some elements are still a mess, such as the ugly comments under feed items. And some continue to get worse, like the headache-inducing privacy settings.

Facebook Lite was not perfect, but I suspect that the main problem with the site was that Facebook made it hard to find. Unless you enabled a toolbar (yes, another damn toolbar) along the top of the site to easily switch back and forth, it was nearly impossible to figure out how to do so. As such, I doubt many people used the version. And because it lacked some features of the main site, you were often required to switch back even if you were using Lite by default (the main reason I didn’t use it all the time).

And the truth is that Facebook Lite was always just a test. It was originally designed, much like Facebook Zero, to be used in places around the world that only had slow Internet connections. The test in the U.S. and the rest of the industrialized world seemed to be an experiment to see how people would react to a slimmed down site with less feature clutter (which is exactly why it was never a so-called “Twitter Killer” despite many labeling it as such). As stated, the service used some of Lite to improve the regular version, but Facebook proper is now still much more like Facebook Bloated rather than Facebook Lite.

Thinking back a few years ago when I started using Facebook over MySpace, it had nothing to do with the social graph (MySpace was much larger at the time), but rather because Facebook looked so much nicer and was simpler to use. Despite MySpace’s attempts to improve over the past few years, Facebook still does look much nicer, but I’m not sure who has the edge in simplicity anymore. It’s a problem all sites face as they continue to grow — yes, even Twitter — how do you keep things simple while adding new features to keep your users engaged?

And again, that’s why the killing of Lite is disappointing. It seemed to suggest that huge sites were at least thinking about a move back towards simplicity. Now, once again, it’s complicated.

Slingshot Labs, a research and development arm for News Corp.’s digital properties, has lost its two top execs. President Josh Berman and EVP Strategy and Product Diego Berkadin gave News Corp Digital Chief Jon Miller their resignations last week, we’ve heard from multiple sources. Like a plethora of ex MySpace and Fox execs, they are likely to be starting their own company.

This leaves Slingshot Labs in disarray at a crucial moment. Their “LinkedIn Killer” product, internally known as WSJ Connect or Streetfeed, is supposed to go into beta testing next month. We first wrote about the project last year.

Slighshot Labs has also had a couple of other successful product launches. Daily Fill is still going strong. Another project, SocialPlan, is now the backbone of the new MySpace Events. MySpace even grabbed that team out of Slingshot and made them full time MySpace employees.

This also marks the departure of the last MySpace founder from News Corp. Josh Berman was the COO of MySpace at the time it was acquired. Chris DeWolfe (CEO), Tom Anderson (President), Aber Whitcomb (CTO), and Colin Digiaro (SVP Sales) have all now left to work on different projects. Except for Tom, it’s not clear what he’s up to these days.

Here’s a ray of product sunshine in an otherwise overcast MySpace world. Tonight they are launching a new MySpace events and calendar platform that integrates technology from MySpace Music, iLike, Social Plan and Facebook Connect (told you). It includes new tools for Artists to add concert events and allows users to add those events, share them, and even purchase tickets right from MySpace. It’s an elegant weaving of products that plays to a core strength of MySpace – music, and a huge database of event information – around 1 million concert events in 2010 alone. You can see the new MySpace Events page here.

It’s also a huge improvement from the existing event and calendaring apps on MySpace. Here’s what a concert event used to look like on MySpace:

Here’s what an event might look like now, after the new launch:

Users are also encouraged to share events with friends in the MySpace stream, on Facebook or on Twitter. And artists are being given new tools to actually create attractive concert listings. All of these events are aggregated into the users’ MySpace Calendars along with their normal calendar data.

In the coming months, says MySpace, they’ll add additional features around mobile access, concert notifications and movies and DVD releases and premiers.

The new rule around here is that if someone interesting comes through our office, we do a video interview. There are no exceptions, and your only real choice is to grin and bear it, or run away. MySpace VP Dani Dudeck came by today to brief us on a new product launch, and sat stoically through the “interview.”

You can listen to her patiently not answer questions about morale at MySpace, whether the new co-president structure is working, and other important issues that we want to understand.