MarketMe 2.0

It was probably inevitable given what Google did with Gears, but Yahoo said Tuesday it's releasing BrowserPlus software as open-source software.

BrowserPlus and Gears are aimed at improving browsers' native abilities so Web applications can better match those running natively on a computer's operating system, and Gears already is open-source software. Yahoo announced its intent to make BrowserPlus open-source software on its Yahoo Developers Blog on Tuesday.

"Openness is a key initiative and a major theme for Yahoo this year and beyond, and open-sourcing BrowserPlus is part of that commitment," said team member Lloyd Hilaiel. "This will allow developers to rapidly extend the platform in a distributed fashion. Our hope is that community contributions and review will ensure BrowserPlus stays a secure, robust platform running on all popular operating systems and browsers. I'd like to see BrowserPlus become a valuable piece of Internet infrastructure."

Hilaiel also pointed to a number of feature ideas people have suggested.

"Folks on the forums are talking about peer-to-peer support. People are suggesting screen capture technology for better bug reporting. Webcam integration! Easy import of calendaring data! Drag-and-drop of Word documents! BitTorrent! There's no shortage of ideas. Mainly I'm excited to see what the community creates in the coming weeks and months," he said.

He also drew some distinctions between BrowserPlus and Gears. "Gears is attempting to accelerate the evolution of the Web by enabling features with wide appeal that can be implemented everywhere. BrowserPlus is more interested in fixing the Web plug-in environment, making rapid experimentation possible," he said.

BrowserPlus is a framework with a variety of plug-ins; a new version released earlier in November debuted a plug-in computer's motion sensors, for example. The plug-in architecture is designed to let Web site designers add new abilities to Web pages without requiring people to restart their browsers. With the new version, anyone may use BrowserPlus framework, which previously had been confined to some Yahoo Web sites.

With the overall economy slumping, the tech industry is taking its fair share of hits. We'll keep updating the chart below as news of company changes comes in. See our complete coverage of how the tech sector is faring here: Tracking the tech downturn.

Know of a layoff not listed here? Let us know on this form or e-mail us.

See also: The spreadsheet of sunshine: Who's hiring.

If you want a real-time view into the world of layoffs, use this Twitter search. But we recommend having a stiff drink first.

As mentioned early last month by my colleague Daniel Terdiman, Microsoft is giving users the option to browse and purchase Xbox Live Marketplace content within the browser. The new storefront, which is slated to go live early Wednesday morning, is already beginning to appear on Xbox.com, albeit in incomplete form.

The new system gives Web users the same catalog to browse through and purchase as they get on the Xbox 360, including themes, gamer pictures, demos, and downloadable games. Once players turn on their system at home, all the purchased items are queued up and begin downloading right away.

Users are also able to manage their download queue from the site. This includes the option to view your past purchase history, and re-download old content. Microsoft's new system only lets you do this one item at a time, however I can easily see the company adding a bulk queue management tool later on down the line. In the meantime, this is a far better way to go through and re-download a large number of items than navigating the list on the console. In case of a hard drive crash or any other loss of data, this is a quick way to get back up to speed.

The new online marketplace lets you re-download items you've already purchased. Once you start up your system at home they'll start downloading.

(Credit: CNET Networks)

While you cannot play the movies, music videos, and TV shows from your browser once purchased, the online experience includes the same short video previews that are available on the console itself. It also lets you hop around available content a whole lot faster, despite the addition of alphanumeric searching on the freshly updated system software.

Other small improvements include the option to add more Microsoft points to your account balance, and tack on extra time to your Xbox Live membership. There's also the option to enter redemption codes, which are given out in retail cards and as promotional items for early betas, and exclusive content giveaways. Allowing users to submit these codes at any time means many more folks will be able to claim them in situations where they cannot make it home--giving them a jump start on contests or other limited-time offers.

The new Xbox.com Web marketplace should be completely up and running early Wednesday morning (PST). In the meantime, registered Xbox.com users can still access the new Marketplace interface to add Microsoft Points, edit account information, change Xbox Live membership levels, and redeem prepaid and promotional codes.

The new Facebook for BlackBerry, version 1.5, is scheduled for release in January 2009, according to crackberry.com. The latest version of the BlackBerry-specific mobile site hosts a few new features that you may find helpful.

New account creation lets you make a new account directly from your BlackBerry, and you can also access and manage your Facebook phone book. This includes the ability to view your friends’ phone numbers, publish your phone number, and request phone numbers. This is an important feature as it allows users to tie in phone numbers from Facebook straight into their BlackBerry contact lists.

As birthday reminders have proven to be one of the most useful applications of a Facebook account, it’s no surprise that the new version 1.5 has a birthday and BlackBerry calendar link, automatically importing and linking your friends’ big day to your phone’s calendar. This useful calendar integration goes for Facebook events as well, with multi-color differentiation for both birthday and event markings on the calendar. Need an additional reminder for birthdays and events? This can be set up as well.

With a major highlight of Facebook for BlackBerry version 1.5 being the furthered integration into the Facebook network and BlackBerry mobile device, there are some concerns that come to mind, considering the initial issues that arose for the first Facebook for BlackBerry release last year. Too much integration in an un-modified manner led to some overrun applications on the BlackBerry, as Nick experienced on his own handheld device.

Yet given Facebook’s involvement with the development of the BlackBerry version of the popular social network, as well as previous experience and the seemingly minimal leaps that the new version 1.5 features will offer in comparison to the first version, such BlackBerry malfunctions seem to be an unlikely occurrence. It’s also important to note that Facebook for BlackBerry version 2.0 is also reported to be in the works. According to crackberry.com, Facebook for BlackBerry version 2.0 is slotted for release later on next year.

(Credit: Howcast Media)

Facebook, Google, and the Google-owned YouTube are among the sponsors for the Alliance of Youth Movements Summit, an event taking place at New York's Columbia Law School from December 3-5.

Along with other collaborators--which include the U.S. Department of State, MTV, Access 360 Media, and start-up Howcast--the event hopes to "find (the) best ways to use digital media to promote freedom and justice, and counter violence, extremism, and oppression."

The companies have amassed 17 leaders of different activist groups and hope to bring them together to come up with a common set of principles and strategies, inspired by a movement against a Colombian extremist group that was formed and organized on Facebook.

"Aided by social-networking technologies, the organization inspired 12 million people in 190 cities around the world to take to the streets in protest against the FARC, an extremist group that has been terrorizing Colombia for more than 40 years," an announcement of the summit read. "The magnitude of the marches illustrated once and for all that the FARC lacked a strong support base. Within days of the protests, the FARC witnessed massive desertions from their ranks."

Speakers at next month's summit include Facebook co-founder Dustin Moskowitz, actress and talk show host Whoopi Goldberg, and State Department Undersecretary James K. Glassman.

The State Department has already partnered with YouTube for its "Democracy Challenge," a moviemaking competition in conjunction with several film schools. And in the wake of the 2008 presidential election, Facebook has been stepping up its activism and outreach efforts; earlier this fall, it sponsored the ServiceNation summit.

Here's an oldie but a goodie. Feed Rinse is a super simple and user-friendly way to tweak RSS feeds before subscribing to them in your favorite reader tool.

With it you can pick which authors or keywords you want to exclude, giving you complete control over what ends up filling your feed reader. For example, on Webware's RSS feed you could very quickly choose to only get posts about Google (which is possible on our main site using tags), or a handful of keywords at the same time.

Hate reading a certain blogger? Choose to block or otherwise filter posts by keyword, title, author, and more with Feed Rinse.

(Credit: CNET Networks)

As Martin over at Ghacks points out, you could accomplish a similar feat on Yahoo's Pipes service, although I found Feed Rinse to be dramatically easier to use. It's a lot like programming a smart playlist in iTunes, with simple drop-down menus, instead of Pipes' system which requires you to create programming strings.

One thing worth mentioning is that Feed Rinse is smart enough to know you're going to take your newly created RSS feed elsewhere, and as such has special links that will send your feed out to various reader services like iGoogle, My Yahoo, Netvibes, and others. There's also a bookmarklet that lets you tweak the RSS feed on any site you're on with one click. Both are nice touches that save you time.

Feed Rinse is completely free to use, although you're limited to creating and managing just 500 filters per user account. The service previously had a premium and plus plans, however these disappeared two years ago in place of a unified offering.

(via Ghacks)

The new version of Safari, which was largely a security update and released last week, includes a new configuration option saying: "Warn when visiting a fraudulent website". It is configured to be on by default. So far, Apple is not talking about the enhancement, nor is there any documentation on the Safari site.

CNET tested the updated Safari 3.2 for Windows on various newly reported phish sites listed on DSLreports and PhishTank, and found none produced a warning. It could be that the phish sites being tested were not yet reported to the Google database or that the antiphishing update hadn't made it locally to our Safari browser for blocking.

According to Ryan Naraine at ZDNet, the alert displays standard language. It also includes two links, one to Google's explanation of a phishing site, the other to a Google Report an Error page.

Apple uses standard language when blocking a suspected phishing site.

(Credit: ZDNet)

Apple is the last of the major browser vendors to offer antiphishing protection.

Microsoft uses its own antiphishing and anti-malware tool for Internet Explorer; Mozilla uses a combination of tools, including Google, for Firefox; Opera uses Haute Secure to provide bogus site warnings to end users; and Google uses its own antiphishing technology within its Chrome browser.

Boxee, the media center solution that aggregates your content as well as content from across various web and other media services, has raised $4 million in its first round of financing, led by Spark Capital and Union Square Ventures. While the concept of Boxee isn’t entirely new, the fresh stance of near-total media aggregation coupled with multiple social networking interfaces makes Boxee an enticing new product in this growing marketplace.

While other services like TiVo are beginning to incorporate other features from third parties such as Rhapsody, Boxee is starting out with a host of third-party integrated apps, taking the best of breed services and features for a more inclusive experience. Much of this rests on the social capabilities of the third party services and features, which lend to an array of perks on Boxee, including recommendations from your actual friends, reviews from across the web, and auto-updates to your Twitter and FriendFeed accounts.

The strongest influence of this social networking inclusion is of course the recommendation potential, which can act as a direct or indirect feature on Boxee and across the web. As you can see what your friends are currently viewing, have already viewed and reviewed, or recommend directly on Boxee, the need to go to other networks to find reviews and recommendations is eliminated. Other services, like the set top box Vudu, are moving in this direction for recommendations as well, though not as interactive on the social front. So even though Boxee doesn’t yet have a set top box to speak of, it still remains competitive with the likes of Vudu, and can be utilized on your computer or on your HD television. With this round of funding, however, a set top box is in the works.

Yet on the other end of the spectrum, Boxee’s open source stance enables developers to create applications around the Boxee software, and further the media recommendation potential beyond what Boxee already has. As services like Twitter and especially FriendFeed have an increasing potential to become useful recommendation engines, communicating with portals like Boxee also enhance their offerings as well.

Perhaps the social support of third party apps, which can carry Boxee’s influence far beyond the individual viewing experience, will help Boxee steer clear of the fate of those before it, such as Joost. The “revolutionary” viewing experience that Joost initially brought about garnered a great deal of hype, and got enough old media conglomerates excited enough to sign distribution and advertising deals. Yet Joost, despite social networking integration of things like chat, didn’t become a household name.

I am a big fan of my USB stick and so one of my favourite websites is John Haller’s Portable Apps.   However, it’s been some time since I last checked the site and when I finally took a look at it again at the weekend, I was pleasantly surprised to see that he has been busy.

So let’s take a quick look at five of the new useful portable apps that have appeared on the site :

Cool Player Portable

A very easy to use audio player that, to me, looks a little like Winamp.   The playback quality is amazingly good and it has all the features you would expect from a music player such as playlists, skins, shuffle and so on.   You just drop the music tracks into the playlist box and it immediately plays.   So simple even my grandmother could do it.

Eraser Portable

I really like this one. Eraser is something I have previously profiled on MakeUseOf. It is a secure deletion program and now a portable version is here for the USB stick. Just drag and drop the files onto the interface then go to Task->Run All to delete everything securely and permanently. Works like a charm.

GIMP Portable

Everybody knows GIMP and the portable version is no different than the full version.    Having it on your USB stick means you can edit and redo your images while you are on the move.

JK Defrag Portable

This would be a good one for any computer repair people who go round to repair other peoples computers.  You can now have a portable defrag program on your USB stick.

VirtualDub Portable

Another of my favourite apps which I have previously profiled on MakeUseOf. VirtualDub is a video editing program where you can cut videos, join videos together, remove the audio, add audio and much more.  Now you can do this from your USB stick!

There’s lots more on the PortableApps site.   I strongly recommend you take a look!   There’s even a portable version of Celestia which Jorge covered yesterday.

(By) Mark O'Neill is a freelance writer, blogger and the editor of Make Use Of. Check out his blog at Better Than Therapy.

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You2Gov, a political communication site, announced Tuesday that it will start offering its "Direct Democracy 3.0" service to organizations and businesses that want to add social-networking features to their Web sites and allow visitors to contact their elected officials, as well as form online communities around issues, and stay up to date on relevant topics.

"We just watched the Obama campaign masterfully use the Internet to raise record amounts of money, energize supporters, educate the public about the candidate, and get out the vote," said Alan W. Silberberg, CEO of You2Gov in a statement. "In 'Direct Democracy 3.0,' organizations have the same opportunity to use technology to more effectively work with their members and customers.

"Social networking and online advocacy tools change the entire dynamic for organizations by making advocacy simple and providing an online destination that members want to return to regularly," Silberberg continued. "This is the future of communication."

According to the company, any Web site that deploys its "Direct Democracy 3.0" tools will be able to feature a bulletin board to communicate with members, a calendar that anyone can add events to, updated news and videos, a legislation research center, a place to send letters to elected officials, and a back-end management program to maintain the network.

The premise may sound fine, but You2Gov has come under fire recently for not providing users with the kind of service it promised. According to Webware's Bob Walsh in a review of the service last month, You2Gov isn't delivering the experience it claims to offer.

"The idea--the ability to send e-mail or Skype call your elected congressman with a click, catch up with the latest political feeds from various news orgs, and do the social thing--is good, but the execution so far is poor," he said. "When I tried to send one of my senators an e-mail, I got a cryptic error message. There are other flaws throughout the site as well."

Granted, You2Gov's "Direct Democracy 3.0" will be on partner sites, but if the experience is similar, the company may have trouble coaxing Web site owners and users to its service.