They’ve added support for Street View, which allows you to get a pedestrian’s-eye view of any street Google has cruised down with their panoramic-shootin’ super car. It’s a feature that has been around for quite some time on the desktop version, but is mounds more useful on-the-go. Source:TechCrunch

WEbook has raised $5 million in funding. The round was led by WEbook’s new investor, Vertex Venture Capital and its existing backer, Greylock Partners Israel. The round also included investments from eight unnamed angel investors.

WEbook is an online platform where the site’s users — authors, writers, and even readers — collaborate to write books. Since its April 2008 launch, WEbook has added thousands of writers, editors, illustrators, and readers to its service and the site is currently hosting 15,000 book projects in genres ranging from short stories to non-fiction. Once a book is completed, it goes through a community vetting process where the users vote on books. Those that perform best during the process will be published by WEbook. WEbook shares 50 percent of the profit on sales with the author and the book’s major contributors as a fee for publishing the title.

AdCamo, the service for advertising in the background of web pages, is re-launching today as a platform for web sites and ad networks that want to offer the format to their clients. For publishers, this means if you want to sell background advertising, you can use AdCamo to manage campaigns and serve inventory. For ad networks and agencies, there is an API so the AdCamo platform can be integrated into your own systems and software.

The backbone of this strategy is something that AdCamo calls the Platform Management Interface, which features many of the same tools you’d expect in an ad platform, but designed specifically for the background ad format. You can create new campaigns, track impressions and clicks, and view details on a unique metric for the format called Time Before Click (TBC) that lets you see how long it takes someone to click on the background ad.

Of course, the big question about background ads is whether or not websites will adopt them because of the obvious aesthetic issue. As I noted in my earlier review of AdCamo, the format is often used by MySpace, but hasn’t seen massive adoption by the small-to-midsize publishers that AdCamo would seem to be targeting with its new strategy. To try and address this, AdCamo is offering 3 different ad formats that publishers can use: Tiled, Projection, and Pillar.

And, these formats actually seem pretty flexible. While the “Tiled” format (the same image repeated over and over) is perhaps a bit obnoxious, Projection and Pillar are neat because the background isn’t actually a glaring ad, but rather imagery that compliments traditional banner advertising placed elsewhere on the page. My favorite is this sample coffee ad, where the background is coffee beans, with a banner ad for them in the middle of the page:

In short, if background advertising takes off, AdCamo is well positioned to be the platform for managing it. Becoming a platform as opposed to an ad network is a smart strategy for driving adoption, as it means the company can focus on the technology while allowing firms with existing clients to do the selling. Will publishers bite? As always, it comes down to whether or not advertisers are willing to spend enough on the unproven ad format to make publishers sacrifice the aesthetics of a clean web page background. For its part, AdCamo says that it already has several large publishers using the service and ad agency alliances locked up, but declined to cite any names at this point.

—Related Articles at Mashable! - The Social Networking Blog:AdCamo Monetizes Web Page BackgroundsAOL’s Platform-A Expands to EuropeMaven’s Internet TV Network Offers Unique Ad PlatformAOL Acquires Third Screen Media, Broadening Mobile Ad PlatformsMashMeet LA 2.0: Final Recap, Pictures, Video, and ThanksPushed By Icahn, Yahoo Jumps Back Into Ad Deal With Google?DoubleClick to Serve Silverlight Ads — Microsoft Looks Foolish Again

Source:Mashable!

Facebook may be the de facto leader in the United States, but in Japan (and other areas across the globe) it has some significant work to do if it wants to catch up to the local social network flavors.

But according to comScore, it’s doing just that.  Over the past year, Facebook’s growth has tripled and it’s quickly gaining ground on Japan’s top social network, Mixi.JP.  In fact, Facebook grew an astounding 213 percent over the past year, while Mixi grew by just 3 percent and MySpace inched forward just 10 percent.

That said, Facebook is still way behind Mixi and other social networks in Japan.  During the last year, 12 million visitors used Mixi, while just 172,000 visited Facebook.

Regardless, Facebook’s astounding growth in Japan and other places across the globe underscore an interesting development in the company’s next phase of growth: for quite a while, it was a US social network, but as it continues to improve its services and use its localization efforts, it’s quickly realizing that Facebook will appeal to people all over the globe.

And in the process, I wonder if Facebook can be the first major social network to break out of the walled-garden mentality that has developed in the space and become the leading social network both domestically and abroad.

As it stands, MySpace, Facebook, Orkut, Mixi, and countless other social networks reign supreme in certain countries throughout the world.  But as Facebook’s popularity grows all over the world – it currently does best in the US, Canada, and South Africa – it’s slowly but surely bucking that trend.

For years, we’ve listened to countless social networks claim that they have what it takes to be the world’s supreme social network that people from anywhere would love and enjoy.  But so far, not one company has been able to deliver.

But as we consider the growth Facebook is enjoying and delve a bit deeper into its performance across the globe, we quickly find that its localization service has worked extremely well and it’s quickly becoming a major player in many of the major foreign markets.  That doesn’t mean that it’s necessarily going to control those markets and it doesn’t even mean that it will win out.  But it does mean that Facebook is the first social network in recent memory to fully grasp a presence in more countries than its own.

And that, for sure, is an important first step in taking a more global role.

—Related Articles at Mashable! - The Social Networking Blog:Twitter in Japanese, If You PleaseCould Yahoo “Keep Things In the Family” By Selling to Yahoo Japan?MySpace Japan ComingZooomr Launches Mobile Features and Opens Japan OfficeYouTube Concedes To Japanese DemandsThinkFree Signs Deal with Sourcenext to Enter Japanese MarketDIY Ad Network Partners with Technorati Japan

Source:Mashable!

Issuu has released a new publishing platform that could very well change the rules of the game when it comes to creating online publications. The platform is a place where developers, designers and companies can work together in collaboration to customize their Issuu distributed publications such as magazines, newsletters, etc.

New Tools

They will also release the documentation for their IML (Issuu Markup Language)  which will be used to control the viewer’s theme. The custom themes or skins are hosted on your own website (you just point to that location in the URL), so basically anyone who knows how to upload a file to a Web server can use it. This means that hardcore developers and designers will have the ability to create all kinds of new things for the Issuu viewer. More details on using their full API will be coming soon too.

Customization Crazy

Besides changing the theme, you will also be able to customize your publications even further by adding your own logo, background, buttons, and other elements.

To Flash or Not to Flash

Issuu provides two radically different ways to customize the viewer. You can either use the industry standard Adobe Flash or any image editing software that you prefer. This is a smart move on their part because the last thing you want to do is limit the options that you provide your users. It would’ve been detrimental to cram just a Flash option down everyone’s throats. It’s also an Iphone friendly decision.

Recent Improvements

Before releasing the new Platform, Issuu was wise enough to resolve their existing technical issuus ..er…issues. They fixed several problems and improved their service by listening to their core users.

Here’s what they took care of last week:

Presentation mode

Combined with their full-screen mode it now provides a rich choice of presentation modes. It can be a handy backup when presenting and getting feedback for listeners. It’s also ideal for photo-presentations.

Paper mode

This is an innovative online PDF reader that works entirely without Flash. Built with the Ajax framework, this viewer will replace swf content with jpegs, if Flash isn’t installed. Obviously, this was created with iPhone users in mind.

Closer means faster

The most important improvement has been performance, always the biggest complaint for any online service. Issuu accomplished this by serving files from a server that is geographically closer to the user.

Other important features

Issuu provides some key features to keep in mind such as crisp vector graphics, true full-screen mode, three zoom modes: Free move, Hand tool, Read mode and strong Google indexing.

Mashable View

Here’s a sample publication created on the new Issuu platform for a Mashable article. Notice the slick new look and feel. Everything is extremely customizable and easy to change.

Get your own - Open publication

Conclusion

While all of this coolness comes free at this time, there will be a Pro version somewhere down the road which will offer many more bells and whistles. This premium edition will provide businesses with the tools needed in order to produce and distribute proprietary content in a more secure and professional manner. In the mean time, anyone can start taking advantage of a free publishing tool that used to cost an arm and leg.

The online publishing space is a hot arena these days with players like Scribd, Yudu, DocStoc and others. The Issuu Platform will definitely raise the bar.

Issuu company profile provided by TradeVibes

—Related Articles at Mashable! - The Social Networking Blog:Head to Head: Document Sharing SitesThe Daily Poll: Would You Build Apps for the MySpace Developer Platform?LinkedIn Outlines Strategy for Upcoming PlatformClearspring Opens Community Platform for DevelopersThe Daily Poll: Which Platform is the Best Opportunity for Developers?Slide Set to Release Official MySpace AppsMySpace Slated To Launch Improvements To Developer Platform

Rediff, one of the top online portals in India and one currently listed on the NASDAQ stock market, has evidently followed the past year progress of third-party developments within Facebook closely. Now it wants to stir a similar amount of interest in its own set of properties as well. Announced at Delhi’s Proto.in startup event, Rediff officially took the covers off its own developer program, called, plainly enough, The Rediff Platform.

The reason for the Facebook reference is simple. The company states that its properties are “being made…to support FBML,” Facebook’s markup language.

Indeed, Rediff is pushing an idea eminently synonymous with Facebook’s own. The phrase “apps economy” is writ large on the Rediff Developers page. But it’s also an effort that the company hopes will align with multiple pieces of the Rediff puzzle. To kick off the developer program, Rediff is first opening iShare, its music, video, and photo sharing service.

The company is promising grants to some students and entrepreneur developers through a basic submission program it is calling “Sociali.” The sum being touted by the company to fuel ideas thought promising ideas is 250,000 rupees, or US$5,800. A relatively small figure, it seems, especially if juxtaposed against Rediff’s expected revenue report for Q2 2008 (roughly $17 million). All may depend on the supply of developers Rediff finds enticing enough to fund in the weeks and months ahead.

The company states that developers ready to begin fabricating can now do so with data provided through its new website.

—Related Articles at Mashable! - The Social Networking Blog:Google and Yahoo Looking to Acquire India-Based RediffiShare, The Indian YouTubeYahoo Takes Large Stake in India’s Tyroo MediaThe Daily Poll: Would You Build Apps for the MySpace Developer Platform?LinkedIn Outlines Strategy for Upcoming PlatformClearspring Opens Community Platform for DevelopersThe Daily Poll: Which Platform is the Best Opportunity for Developers?

Source:Mashable!

Want to read a wealth of magazines without spending a dime on subscriptions or one-time transactions? A website by the name of Mygazines is promising just that.

I for one can’t imagine the number of copyrights the site and/or its users have infringed upon. It must be many, no doubt. (depending on whether they’re considered independent items or part of publishers’ portfolios). But perhaps the concept of Mygazines itself, in some form or another, is something that will eventually become a sort of standard for the industry.

The way in which the website functions is quite user friendly. But even more important to note is that Mygazines’s idea of freely publishing any weekly/monthly/quarterly, irrespective of the source, will resonate with people. Simply put, the consumer space is driving in the direction of a mostly pulp-less new paradigm. And if you want to see where things are headed, Mygazines is perhaps the most overt example to date.

After all, subscriptions will either be acceptably inexpensive for the reader to consume, with, say, more than 9/10 lopped off the average annual mailer fee, or they will be entirely without cost to the reader other than time and the amount given for particular electronic device. Looking at what the daily news business is having to struggle with today (from subscriptions to ad-supported websites), it’s safe to say that the latter option will be the likely scenario to emerge - albeit with a select few holdouts dotting the landscape that manage to make do with reader contributions.

The delivery mechanism is the reason this movement toward free, of course. That and the fact that information today doesn’t play well with barriers. (Media in music and video form, as well as long-form books and perhaps some pre-eminent journals here and there, are an exception in my mind, because there’s really no easy way to maintain an appreciable experience and survive on a advert-content ratio of 50/50 or worse. Music and ads can be taken together sometimes. But all the time? That I strongly doubt. The same for some video productions. And things like The New Yorker and The Virginia Quarterly Review.) For the most part, the dead-paper publishing industry long imagined to be on an interminable course no longer seems to have the wherewithal to go much further. The tangible representations of the vast majority of newspapers and magazines are slated for fairly swift elimination. That’s the reality of it. Wireless, handheld technologies are only further goading the grim reaper at this point.

Now, it should be said that Mygazines isn’t the first digital magazine service to come about. There has been at least one name in operation that has delivered digital copies of subscriptions and single issues on-demand over the Web for years. Zinio is its name. I actually gave them a try some years back. The experience wasn’t excellent at the time, but it wasn’t terrible either. Anyway, Zinio’s basic premise is convenience, but with a cost. Like with its publisher partners, it operates on a paid-for platform.

Mygazines doesn’t. Sure, it will most likely have to contend with takedown notices and threats of legal action and possible destruction. (Unless it can do things like YouTube and pin any unsavory blame  on its users’ uploads.) But the way it works is free. People like free. Which means that, if anything, an actor like Zinio will look more like Mygazines than the reverse in relatively short order.

Mygazines isn’t perfect. That I can say with some certainly. Some things about it could use changing. Layout could be a bit better, perhaps. But the experience offered is, I think, what readers will want a lot more of. It would naturally be too much to expect publishers to jump aboard at this point. They’re more attuned to strike up opposition. Massive opposition, even. But where will the give-and-take eventually lead, do you think? In the vein of Mygazines, I suspect.