For your evening amusement (and nothing more), Flickr user elbewerk has found a creative way to try and convince people that, no, he's not actually using a PC.

Persuasive? Perhaps not. But at least it's marginally more honest about being a PC compared to, say, an MSI Wind.

[Via Digg.]

TUAWFlickr Find: Close, but not quite originally appeared on The Unofficial Apple Weblog (TUAW) on Thu, 20 Nov 2008 21:20:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Flickr user raneko had a mucky Mighty Mouse, and decided to take it to pieces and clean it. This wasn’t something Apple intended to happen, so it’s quite an involved process - you can follow raneko’s progress from this photo in his Apple set (which has a bunch of other great Apple pics in it).

(Photo used under Creative Commons license. Thanks to raneko.)

Lively, Google’s Venture into virtual worlds would be killed by the end of December, according to a Google blog post. The only reason that I could attribute to this move is the economic downturn which has forced even the Search Giant to cut down on expenses and weed out all the non performing products.

According to Google Blog:

[D]espite all the virtual high fives and creative rooms everyone has enjoyed in the last four and a half months, we’ve decided to shut Lively down at the end of the year. It has been a tough decision, but we want to ensure that we prioritize our resources and focus more on our core search, ads and apps business.

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“Meninos is a creative team with experience from a wide range of clients, specialized in illustration, graphics and motion design,” according to the website copy. the iPhone icon coaster set pictured above is but one of many whimsical designs available on what appears to be a website based in Brazil.

“We start making this products for personal use, then for friends and now we sell for friends of friends,” they say. All products are designed and created (hand made) by the artists and designers at Meninos studio, where they like to make things simple and different.

“…despite all the virtual high fives and creative rooms everyone has enjoyed in the last four and a half months, we’ve decided to shut Lively down at the end of the year. It has been a tough decision, but we want to ensure that we prioritize our resources and focus more on our core search, ads and apps business. Lively.com will be discontinued at the end of December, and everyone who has worked on the project will then move on to other teams.”

Given the already vast amount of resources being devoted to their core company interests like search, ads, and apps, there is likely other reasons behind the shutdown, like the inability to police the service in the manner they planned, or the fact that hardly anyone uses it.

There’s No Sex in the Champagne Room in Lively

Frankly, I didn’t imagine that the service would be that unpopular, but perhaps I should have.  Linden Lab’s Second Life has had issues creating a legitimate and sizable userbase outside it’s red light district.

The other popular service that was anything akin to what Lively had to offer was the immensely popular (and profitable) IMVU, which thrives off their always flirtatious, frequently risqué, and occasionally obscene userbase.

Meanwhile, Lively promised to be all the fun of a virtual chat room with none of the ‘benefits’ offered by its competitors, promising to root out what I’ve always called the building blocks of the Internet:

I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again - the Internet has been built on two cornerstones: sex and hate. You’ll have griefers anywhere there’s a group of people, and if there’s anywhere that creativity’s encouraged, folks will use that creativity to come up with new ways to talk about, view, or engage in virtual sex.

As Eric Rice noted on FriendFeed last night, though, “the top rooms on Lively right now: Sex, Gay, Sex, Goons, Brasil, Developer City, Caroline, Sex, Sex, Sex.”

It’s unfortunate that this technology wasn’t pushed a little bit further, as I think Google had a real opportunity to advance the future of what we see as “the Internet experience” to new heights. Unfortunately, their goals simply didn’t align with their blue-sky methods, and it was doomed to fail from the beginning.

---
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Smart move, given the rotting economy and pressure for Google to control costs and hit its numbers. One easy way to help both of those: Pull resources away from silly, unnecessary side projects.

(Wonder what else is on the chopping block. Let us know.)

From Google:

In July we launched Lively in Google Labs because we wanted users to be able to interact with their friends and express themselves online in new ways. Google has always been supportive of this kind of experimentation because we believe it's the best way to create groundbreaking products that make a difference to people's lives. But we've also always accepted that when you take these kinds of risks not every bet is going to pay off.

That's why, despite all the virtual high fives and creative rooms everyone has enjoyed in the last four and a half months, we've decided to shut Lively down at the end of the year. It has been a tough decision, but we want to ensure that we prioritize our resources and focus more on our core search, ads and apps business. Lively.com will be discontinued at the end of December, and everyone who has worked on the project will then move on to other teams.

We'd encourage all Lively users to capture your hard work by taking videos and screenshots of your rooms.

See Also:
Will Google's Lively Turn Into A Virtual Arcade?
Is Sex Coming To Google's Lively After All?
Google: No Sex in Second Life-Killer Lively

First up is Ryan Kairer whose PhoneFavs and Palm InfoCenter I've covered previously. The prolific Ryan has just launched three new mobile (and web) sites, Mobility Beat, Tech News Tube and Mac Hash. They are all tech news agregators and share the same template and architecture but each has a different focus.

Mobility Beat (m.mobilitybeat.com) gathers the latest mobile industry and handset news from several dozen sites including All About Symbian, Phone Scoop, Engadget Mobile, Gizmodo, jkOnTheRun, MobileBurn and many lesser known blogs including Wap Review. The site's attractive front page lists the title of each item together with the site's logo. Items posted in the last hour are marked with a blue dot. You can filter the items to include only a articles covering a  specific topic like "Android" or "Windows Mobile".

Clicking a headline leads to a summary page which has options to go to the full article on the site where it was published, view a mobilized version or add the item as a social bookmark on PhonFavs.  MobilitBeat uses PhoneFav's own transcoder which is fairly basic.  It does a good job of reformatting pages as a single column but does not split large pages or resize images.  Mobilized pages from image heavy sites like TechCrunch may be too large to load on phones with basic Wap browsers.  My suggestion to anyone building a site like this, is to use Google's transcoder rather than rolling your own.  Google's works, it's free and Google doesn't seem to mind.

Tech News Tube (m.technewstube.com) shares the same basic design and features as MobilityBeat but it's TOPIC is general tech news and its sources are the usual suspects like Ars Technica, Digg, Engadget, GigaOM, Gizmodo, Slashdot, The Register, Tom's Hardware and VentureBeat.

Mac Hash (m.machash.com) Is all things Apple, with the freshest stories pulled from the Apple Faithful's favorite sites: AppleInsider, iLounge, MacNN, MacRumors, Macworld, TUAW and over a dozen more.

The other new site is from Salvador Gonzalez whose SitiosWAP, is one of the most popular Spanish language mobile web portals.  Salvador has just released an English language edition of SitiosWA.

The focus of SitiosWAP is to provide a mobile directory aimed primarily at the Hispanic audience, with sites selected on the basis of the quality of their information and services. There are extensive listings of mobile properties from and about each of the Latin American countries and Spain as well as links to Spanish editions of major US and International mobile news, sports, travel and information sites

The new site, english.sitioswap.com has an English user interface and lists and links to sites in both English and Spanish.  It seems like a good destination for someone who is bilingual but whose Spanish is not quite as strong as their English and for anyone  learning Spanish.

I've added these sites to the WapReview Directory in the followwing categories:

Mobility Beat - Technology/Mobile/News - Reviews
Tech News Tube - Technology/Tech News
Mac Hash -Technology/Apple
SitiosWAP - Portals

If you have discovered or created a mobile site I'd love to hear about it.  Please leave a comment on this post or use the Contact Form and  provide the following information;

• Site name as you would like it to appear in the directory.
• Mobile Site URL.
• A brief description of the site. In particular I want to know what makes this site different from and superior to other similar mobile web sites.

Please note that Wap Review is focused on free and ad-supported, off-deck mobile browsing and does not cover the following types of sites and services.

• Sites that are on-deck only.
• Pay or subscription sites or sites sites selling downloadable content such as ringtones or games.
• Gambling, dating or adult sites.
• Non-mobile sites.
• Installable mobile applications except web browsers.
• Sites that are not in English.

I receive many more submissions than I can possibly cover. I'm much more likely to write about your site if it's free from validation errors, scores a four or better on the Ready.mobi Test and provides iunique information or services that will be useful to Wap Review readers.

Related: PhoneFavs - Mobile One Stop Shop

First up is Ryan Kairer whose PhoneFavs and Palm InfoCenter I've covered previously. The prolific Ryan has just launched three new mobile (and web) sites, Mobility Beat, Tech News Tube and Mac Hash. They are all tech news agregators and share the same template and architecture but each has a different focus.

Mobility Beat (m.mobilitybeat.com) gathers the latest mobile industry and handset news from several dozen sites including All About Symbian, Phone Scoop, Engadget Mobile, Gizmodo, jkOnTheRun, MobileBurn and many lesser known blogs including Wap Review. The site's attractive front page lists the title of each item together with the site's logo. Items posted in the last hour are marked with a blue dot. You can filter the items to include only a articles covering a  specific topic like "Android" or "Windows Mobile".

Clicking a headline leads to a summary page which has options to go to the full article on the site where it was published, view a mobilized version or add the item as a social bookmark on PhonFavs.  MobilitBeat uses PhoneFav's own transcoder which is fairly basic.  It does a good job of reformatting pages as a single column but does not split large pages or resize images.  Mobilized pages from image heavy sites like TechCrunch may be too large to load on phones with basic Wap browsers.  My suggestion to anyone building a site like this, is to use Google's transcoder rather than rolling your own.  Google's works, it's free and Google doesn't seem to mind.

Tech News Tube (m.technewstube.com) shares the same basic design and features as MobilityBeat but it's TOPIC is general tech news and its sources are the usual suspects like Ars Technica, Digg, Engadget, GigaOM, Gizmodo, Slashdot, The Register, Tom's Hardware and VentureBeat.

Mac Hash (m.machash.com) Is all things Apple, with the freshest stories pulled from the Apple Faithful's favorite sites: AppleInsider, iLounge, MacNN, MacRumors, Macworld, TUAW and over a dozen more.

The other new site is from Salvador Gonzalez whose SitiosWAP, is one of the most popular Spanish language mobile web portals.  Salvador has just released an English language edition of SitiosWA.

The focus of SitiosWAP is to provide a mobile directory aimed primarily at the Hispanic audience, with sites selected on the basis of the quality of their information and services. There are extensive listings of mobile properties from and about each of the Latin American countries and Spain as well as links to Spanish editions of major US and International mobile news, sports, travel and information sites

The new site, english.sitioswap.com has an English user interface and lists and links to sites in both English and Spanish.  It seems like a good destination for someone who is bilingual but whose Spanish is not quite as strong as their English and for anyone  learning Spanish.

I've added these sites to the WapReview Directory in the followwing categories:

Mobility Beat - Technology/Mobile/News - Reviews
Tech News Tube - Technology/Tech News
Mac Hash -Technology/Apple
SitiosWAP - Portals

If you have discovered or created a mobile site I'd love to hear about it.  Please leave a comment on this post or use the Contact Form and  provide the following information;

• Site name as you would like it to appear in the directory.
• Mobile Site URL.
• A brief description of the site. In particular I want to know what makes this site different from and superior to other similar mobile web sites.

Please note that Wap Review is focused on free and ad-supported, off-deck mobile browsing and does not cover the following types of sites and services.

• Sites that are on-deck only.
• Pay or subscription sites or sites sites selling downloadable content such as ringtones or games.
• Gambling, dating or adult sites.
• Non-mobile sites.
• Installable mobile applications except web browsers.
• Sites that are not in English.

I receive many more submissions than I can possibly cover. I'm much more likely to write about your site if it's free from validation errors, scores a four or better on the Ready.mobi Test and provides iunique information or services that will be useful to Wap Review readers.

Related: PhoneFavs - Mobile One Stop Shop

SoundCloud is one such service. Previously in invite-only beta, SoundCloud launched publicly in October. The service lets you “move music fast & easy. The platform takes the daily hassle out of receiving, sending & distributing music for artists, record labels & other music professionals.”

Anyone can sign up for a free SoundCloud account that includes five track uploads a month. They’re already distinguishing themselves by simplifying the process of sending demos to record labels, something which has historically been done by sub-optimal “attach an MP3″ email or form submission. I’ve done a lot of multimedia compilation, and all those extra steps to sort files gets tiring and dampens the joy of listening.

Beyond the usual…

Here’s where it gets really exciting: SoundCloud is exceptionally blissful to use. Not just pretty, but practical. Beyond the usual AJAX and Flash touches that reduce page reloads and imbue a sense of sheen, there are helpful features that are often found on desktop music apps but seldom on web ones.

For example, after a song’s uploaded, you can tap BPM (Beats Per Minute). Part of the reasoning behind this is because SoundCloud has started holding remix contests, where knowing the tempo is essential to syncing parts, also known as “stems”, with others. Even better, you get a true waveform with your beautifully embeddable widget — a pleasure to navigate, especially if you’ve ever been disappointed by all the pseudo-volume meters and fake waveforms out there (which is a Flash dev’s inside joke in some circles).

Even the upload process is a pleasure. While there’s no batch uploader yet — which would be highly time-saving for musicians with large catalogs who’ve upgraded to the somewhat confusingly-named “PRO Max” account @ €60/month — the uploader is as close to a practical flow as I’ve seen: you use a standard browser to select a file, a progress bar with countdown appears, and there are a few required fields.

Not just MP3s are uploadable: WAV, AIF, AAC, FLAC and OGG are supported. This is great news for professionals concerned about lossless fidelity. If desired, you can add genre details, and being forward-thinking, they’ve included Creative Commons as a licensing choice. The only unfriendliness I came across was getting a weird “(-280)” error after uploading that I wasn’t able to reproduce.

Feature request: as your music collection builds, it’d be great to mass-set permissions. And keywords should be clickable to find other stuff tagged similarly, as the similarly orange-and-purple Jamendo allows.

If you run a site and want to accept music, you can embed a SoundCloud DropBox in your sidebar, as Synthtopia has done. The first time I saw it, my first reaction was to drag an MP3 from my desktop to it — unfortunately that didn’t work, as it’s really just a button you click to get to the standard upload form. Nonetheless, I’ve noticed more of these popping up, suggesting they’re catching on.

What about the social aspects of SoundCloud?

You can add timed comments to a track, which is handy for calling out highlights like “OMG THIS BREAKDOWN ROX!” A few video-sharing sites like Viddler have a similar feature, and it’s not unlike adding markers or hit points in a full-fledged DAW.

You can choose whether your uploaded tracks are public or private. Interestingly, even if you’re on a free account, I discovered you can go above the five tracks/month limit by uploading to your own or other people’s DropBoxes, and I’ve asked SoundCloud about how this is intended to work. There’s a public gallery of Hot Music and Latest Tracks, and mandatory social networking features like adding friends are present. In this Rickroll Era, even MC Hammer is getting in on the fun:

And suitably, when they can’t build their own solutions, SoundCloud piggybacks on complementary companies, using Seesmic for video blog comments and Get Satisfaction for support. I’ve also noticed they have a running Flickr stream of photos tagged “soundcloud.” Observing what other companies SoundCloud is aligned with gives glimmers into their philosophy on creating community. I haven’t extensively tested their help yet, but have seen numerous positive experiences.

Kudos to SoundCloud for their excellent screencasts. They communicate well and compel you to try it out firsthand — with so many sites competing for your attention, a good video tutorial can really “sell” you what it’s all about in a couple minutes and drive your decision to get started.

3 things to look out for:

1. SoundCloud touts their API for plugging in custom apps to their tech. Well-documented, open APIs helped spread Flickr and Twitter’s popularity, so it’ll be intriguing to see what it does for this burgeoning audio service.

2. Copycats of their design by other sites. SoundCloud’s taken the usual “Web 2.0″ staples (starburst graphics, share-this buttons) and done an exemplary amount of going further and leading by unique example. But even if you can bite their style, you can’t steal their community.

3. Will SoundCloud’s freemium business model succeed in the long run? They currently don’t accept PayPal, but say it’s “coming soon.”

Give SoundCloud a go and share your experiences in the comments. Have a fave site that combines the best of substance + style? Let us know!

Torley amplifies your awesome with the useful and fun. He loves life, wife, and watermelons. You can check out his music at Torley.com

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