Vudu does Wikipedia

Microsoft's WebTV service proved pretty conclusively that the masses don't want to surf the Web on their TVs. They want to watch videos, not browse for bargains on Craigslist. Technologies that integrate Web content into TV programming, on the other hand, seem much more promising. Vudu, which delivers movies on demand through the Internet to TV sets, is launching one example today, adding content streamed from Wikipedia to its program guide. 

It's a pretty simple idea. When Vudu users steer their TV sets to one of Vudu's "movie details" screens, they see a brief description of the film in question along with links to more information about the cast, reviews and similar titles. Today, Vudu is adding a new link that will take viewers to the relevant page in Wikipedia. 

There's some technological niftiness involved -- for example, the links inside the Wikipedia pages will be live, enabling people to navigate around the site as if they were using a browser. And any reference in Wikipedia to an actor, director or movie that's in Vudu's database will include links to movies in the Vudu service.

The addition of Wikipedia content is a baby step in the direction of integrated Web content, but it shows off one of the advantages of Vudu streaming its user interface to devices, rather than having it baked into the set-top box. That approach enables the company to update the features of its software in a way that's consistent across all devices, whether they are dedicated Vudu set-tops or multi-purpose devices running Vudu's software. Umm, but there's a catch -- this feature will reach the multi-purpose devices today, but the Vudu set-tops will have to wait for it.

-- Jon Healey

Healey writes editorials for The Times' Opinion Manufacturing Division. Follow him on Twitter: @jcahealey

Searching for an improved online shopping experience? Google has a new plan

Google offered this example of how an online store using Google Commerce Search could look, with searchable products sortable by category, color, size or price. Credit: Google.

Just in time for the holidays, Google Inc. took the wraps off a new business, one designed to help big online retailers make their websites easier to search.

With Google Commerce Search -- a service that will cost retailers $50,000 or more for an annual subscription -- the Internet giant will set up a search function on an online retailer's website, which Google says will dramatically improve user experience and drive sales. The product represents a challenge to Google's archrival Microsoft Corp., as well as to Oracle Corp., Endeca Technologies Inc. and other firms that run retailers' websites.

The main selling points are that everything that has made Google a dominant company -- vast computing resources, algorithms that provide right results, and even the ability to fix your typos and find what you're looking for -- will help people navigate clunky retail websites that cause a major stumbling block to sales.

"Search was the most important aspect of an e-commerce experience," said Nitin Mangtani, a lead product manager at Google. People go to a website looking to buy, say, a laptop, and they search the site for the item they want. "If the users are able to find that laptop easily, they are more likely to buy the product," Mangtani said. "If it takes them eight to 10 seconds, and they can't find it easily, they leave the website."

Whereas people have high expectations, websites weren't delivering, so Google saw an opportunity, the company said.

Search engine analyst Greg Sterling said...

Microsoft partners with Pasadena's OpenX to share online advertising technology

Microsoft Corp. and OpenX Technologies Inc., a Pasadena-based Web advertising firm, have brokered a deal to mutually promote their ad-selling technologies and share customers.

Under the deal, OpenX will offer some of Microsoft's online advertising products to its own customer base of more than 150,000 websites, which collectively serve 300 billion ads per month.  Microsoft will also refer individual business customers to OpenX, which designs custom advertising products for paying clients.

Most of the software offered by 3-year-old OpenX is based on open source technology and has become an attractive option to smaller websites, which can install the OpenX advertising platform for free and begin to make revenue from selling ad space.

Microsoft touted the partnership as an early step into a more diverse and flexible online advertising market.

"Partnering with OpenX for us is emblematic of a desire to accelerate an open ecosystem," said Maggie Finch, manager of Microsoft's business publishing group.  "We want to provide multiple choices and options for publishers of all sizes."

OpenX's technologies allow website owners to efficiently find advertising targeted to their readers. The company's competitors include Google's DoubleClick and Microsoft's aQuantive division, now called Microsoft Advertising.

The companies did not disclose the specific financial terms of the multi-year deal, stressing that it was primarily a way to cross-promote advertising products. Microsoft, however, said there would be no revenue shared as part of the agreement.

"It's the beginning of a partnership," said OpenX chief executive Tim Cadogan, a former advertising executive at Yahoo Inc., with which Microsoft signed a major search advertising deal earlier this year.  "I think it's a good legitimization of what we're doing and hopefully kicks us up to another level in terms of industry awareness."

Corrected, 3:00 p.m.: An earlier version of this post said the OpenX plaftorm served 3 billion ads per month.  The actual number is 300 billion.

-- David Sarno

ReachLocal, with 146,050% growth in five years, tops Deloitte's Fast 500 list

Zorik Gordon, chief executive and founder of Woodland Hills-based ReachLocal, which topped the list for the fastest-growing technology companies, in a photo from October 2007. Credit: Mel Melcon / Los Angeles Times.

Deloitte's Technology Fast 500 rankings were released today, showing the fastest-growing technology, media telecommunications, life sciences and clean technology companies in the United States.

The top 10 companies on the list posted an average revenue growth rate of 53,798% over a five-year period beginning in 2004, and primarily fell in the biotechnology/pharmaceutical and communications/networking categories.

Topping the list was Woodland Hills-based ReachLocal, whose revenue jumped from $100,000 in 2004 to $146.7 million by end of fiscal 2008, or a 146,050% growth rate. It is the only Internet company to take the top spot since Google received the honor in 2004. (The majority of the companies on the list belong to the software sector.)

ReachLocal "brings order to the fragmented Internet by connecting advertisers, publishers, and creative solutions providers together on one platform," according to the company's website.

Zorik Gordon, 37, founded the company in 2004 after dropping out of dental school and working for two Internet start-up companies. His goal was to "democratize Internet advertising" by disseminating elite technology, marketing and advertising tools to small businesses.

ReachLocal has more than 500 Internet marketing consultants who can track clicks, impressions and phone calls and advise businesses on making marketing improvements. The company then helps place small business on various Web platforms and increase their searchability on major search engines.

"We bring tier one advertising technology that's had been only available to top companies down to a historic group of people that could never access these tools and technologies," Gordon said.

-- Melissa Rohlin

U.S. getting out of the Internet management business -- sort of

It sounds almost silly to say it, but the Internet is going global.

Of course, it's already global. But the underlying technology that makes the Internet run was developed by the U.S. Department of Defense 40 years ago, and the federal government continued to have a dominant voice in how the Internet was run.

Eleven years ago, as the Internet took off as a consumer medium and global force, the U.S. turned over some of its governance to a nonprofit group, the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers. ICANN is based in Marina del Rey, where 70 of its 100 employees work, and it oversees what its vice president, Paul Levins, called the "unique and highly technical addressing system" that enables people to surf among 183 million domain names.

The U.S. has kept some authority over ICANN, including regular reviews, but the agreement between the government and ICANN was due to expire today.

The two entities have signed a new agreement that eliminates the U.S. reviews. ICANN now will be reviewed by a broader-based group of stakeholders from around the world.

"One thing this is not is Independence Day," Levins said. "We were independent the day we were established. This is not somehow slipping nooses of accountability or cutting ourselves loose from the U.S."

Instead, he said, the agreement marks a further weaning from U.S. control. The Internet is a public resource that is increasingly managed by its users. "We’ve become an organization accountable solely to the Internet community," he said. "We will have review teams made up of people from all over the globe, not just a government sitting on Pennsylvania Avenue, although they will continue to play a crucial part."

One sign of increasingly international influence to watch for: Domain names such as .com, .org and .gov currently are rendered only in the alphabetic characters we're used to seeing on Western keyboards. ICANN is working on setting up domain names in non-Western characters, such as Chinese or Arabic. And when that happens, Levins said, watch for Internet growth to really take off.

-- Dan Fost

ICANN CEO Rod Beckstrom discusses the new agreement. Credit: ICANN.org.

Cannabis App passes 1,000 paid downloads; SoCal developers stoked

L.A.-based software engineers Devin Calloway and Julian Cain are also medical cannabis patients. And they're looking to "harvest change."

Over the last several months, Calloway, 24, and Cain, 32, matched their programming talents to their political passions to put Cannabis up for sale on iTunes. The price? $2.99. 

Cannabis is a geolocation-based iPhone app that allows users to quickly find the nearest medical marijuana dispensary as well as weed-friendly doctors and lawyers, all with a few quick touches.

The app has sold more than 1,000 units, and its founders said they planned to put 50 cents of every purchase -- or 17% of the proceeds -- toward establishing a nonprofit organization dedicated to media outreach for the pro-pot cause.

The idea behind the app is to "use technology to empower the medical cannabis industry and the global hemp movement," Calloway said.

In California and other states, the substance is legal with a doctor’s prescription but remains illegal under federal law.

Calloway is a founding member of ajnag.com -- that's ganja backwards -- which stands for Activists Justifying the Natural Agriculture of Ganja. According to Calloway, the website was the first comprehensive online map of...

New York Public Library opens elegant room for Wi-Fi users

Edna Barnes Salomon Room, pre Wi-Fi furnishings. Credit: David Sundberg/ESTO

When in New York, visit what is probably the grandest Wi-Fi hotspot in the country.

The New York Public Library today opens its elegant Edna Barnes Salomon Room, which has been used in recent years mostly for special occasions, as a reading room specifically for online users.

The Beaux-Arts room in a 1911 building that houses the library's research collection has seating for 128 people at custom-made black walnut tables. Seating is at brown leather chairs to match the maple wood floor, according to the library.

You can bring your own laptop or, starting July 28, borrow one for free.

The only thing missing will be lattes -- but in these surroundings, who'd want to spill? 

-- David Colker

Downloading service Zookz comes under more fire [UPDATED]

A lawyer representing the Antiguan government just distributed a statement that punches a huge hole in Zookz's argument that its unlicensed movie and music downloading service is legal. As my previous Zookz post noted, the site claims that it can offer unlimited downloads for $10 to $18 a month because of the sanctions the World Trade Organization imposed against the United States in a complaint brought by Antigua and Barbuda. Finding that the U.S. discriminated against offshore online gambling businesses, a WTO appeals panel ruled in December 2007 that the Caribbean nation could request the WTO's permission to suspend intellectual property obligations (e.g., copyrights, trademarks and patents) up to a value of $21 million annually. But a statement from the Antiguan government e-mailed by Robert L. Blumenfeld, a lawyer in El Paso who represents Antigua and Barbuda, says flatly:

The Zookz.com web site is not operating under the authority or with the knowledge of the government of Antigua and Barbuda. More specifically, Zookz.com is not authorized by the government of Antigua and Barbuda, or by the World Trade Organization, to offer entertainment downloads in contravention of international law.

The statement reinforces and expands on the comments earlier in the week by the Office of the U.S. Trade Representative, which said that the WTO hadn't authorized anybody in Antigua to violate copyrights. Here's the kicker from the Antiguan government's statement:

The Zookz.com matter has been referred to the Antiguan Ministry of Legal Affairs for a full investigation.

Ouch. I've pasted the entire statement after the jump.

Update at 5:02 p.m. William Pepper, Zookz' counsel, rejected the Antiguan government's interpretation of the WTO's ruling. Here's his statement:

This is very simple: In December of 2007, the Appellate Body of the WTO confirmed the award of $21,000,000 annually to Antigua. This award imposes sanctions that allow the nullification of the TRIPS obligations for Antigua.

The Antiguan government is not a trading entity in the businesses concerned, it is the sovereign representative of companies that trade and provide revenues to the State. Therefore, the only way the Government of Antigua can derive any benefits from this award is through the trading done by companies in Antigua.

ZookZ is the property of Carib Media Ltd. a company registered and conducting business in the State of Antigua and Barbuda, West Indies.

Therefore there is nothing that requires ZookZ to seek authorization from the WTO or the Government of Antigua to transact its business. As far as ZookZ is concerned, all WTO formalities in regard to the award have been satisfied.

The original version of this post refered to Blumenfeld in the first paragraph as an attorney "purporting to represent" Antigua and Barbuda. I have since been able to confirm that his firm does, in fact, represent that country in this WTO proceeding.

SuperFan, taking affinities further

Social networks are partly about broadcasting information to a far-flung audience, and partly about establishing your identity (or the one you'd like to have). Facebook users, for instance, can publicize lists of their friends, their favorite bands, their tastes in movies and their fealty to particular consumer brands. The new site SuperFan distills the experience of social networking down to the public list of affinities, expanded beyond entertainment and products to a wide array of historical figures, places and even ideas.

Created by the team that developed Tickle.com (the source of many an online personality test), SuperFan plans to make money by selling credits that its members can use to control fan pages and targeted advertisements. More interesting to me, though, is how SuperFan functions as an overlay onto YouTube (and, eventually, other online video sites). Most of the items in SuperFan's inventory of user likes and dislikes include links to images and YouTube videos posted by users. In other words, the site acts as a collection of favorites. "We really want this to be driven by the fans," said Rick Marini, the site's founder and chief executive. That's a bit different from social-media sites such as TVLoop and First on Mars, where users' likes and dislikes can help guide others to choice nuggets within the vast amount of content available. SuperFan moves in the other direction, starting from scratch and offering only the material that's drawn a reaction (good or bad) from its members. It also helps users discover content in more indirect ways than other social-media sites. For example, you might track down the members who share your love of death metal or Jonathan Lethem (or both!) to see what movies or TV shows they recommend. My guess is, that's a technique better suited for those with eclectic tastes.

SuperFan will probably have to attract far more users to become a compelling media portal. But Marini seems to believe that the site's main appeal will be the platform it provides for declaiming one's loyalties. "Everything that defines who you are, you can express on the site," he said. It takes more time to do that than some people may want to invest, and the process of suggesting a favorite not already in SuperFan's database is laborious. In fact, the site reviews the new nominees to make sure they might appeal to other users, too. "We want to include those people, those bands" that users suggest, Marini said, "but I don’t want to put in 'I’m a fan of my cat.' That’s not interesting to the community. There is a gray area we have to get through each day on what makes the cut." That strikes me as both arbitrary and not particularly effective at weeding out the things the site really should be concerned about, namely, marketers creating bogus users to pump up their clients.

Each item has a "SuperFan" who controls some elements of its fan page. To become a SuperFan, you have to either claim that spot before anyone else does or spend SuperFan credits to buy your way to the top of the heap. The site awards credits for creating or uploading content, but it also sells them. Those sales will be the site's main revenue stream, Marini said. It also hopes to command higher-than-average rates from advertisers because of its ability to target their pitches. According to Marini, SuperFan can offer advertisers a more complete profile of its users than other social networks "because we know everything you love in life." He added that the company won't share personally identifiable information with advertisers; instead, it will put their pitches in front of users who match the profiles they're interested in. Still, the more accurate the targeting, the more unsettling the practice may be to users. There's also a limit to how narrow advertisers want to make their pitches; at some point, targeting yields an audience that's just too small to be interesting.

-- Jon Healey

Healey writes editorials for The Times' Opinion Manufacturing Division.

The webcasting deal: What took so long?

How high were the webcasting royalties set by a federal copyright board more than two years ago? So high that the bacon-saving discountannounced Tuesday for "pureplay" webcasters will still require large ones to pay at least25% of their revenues to SoundExchange, the agency that represents labels and performing artists. Techdirt's Mike Masnick also notes that the deal calls for a minimum annual fee of $25,000-- not exactly chump change. Nevertheless, webcaster Kurt Hanson hailed the agreement, saying that the rates imposed by the Copyright Royalty Board "would almost certainly have been a death warrant -- they were the [equivalent] of 70%, 100%, or even more of some webcasters’ total revenues."

Those percentages seem outrageous, but consider this: The royalty set by the CRB for 2009 amounted to 2.7 cents per listener per hour of music streamed. The fact that such a fee would amount to 70% or more of a webcaster's income shows how little these companies have been able to generate from advertisers. The picture has actually worsened for webcasters this year as advertisers cut their spending online and off, strengthening the companies' argument for a discount.

If the numbers were so stark, why did it take a virtual eternity for webcasters and the music industry to agree on a model that seems sustainable? I'd blame four things: