The Next Net

JibJab's "Starring You" Now Live

JibJab has finally launched its "Starring You" series, where you can upload your head into a JibJab animated video (you can see me and my wife shaking it above).  This an example of giving average people the tools to create high-quality content (see previous post).  I broke the "Starring You" story a month ago in one of my Disruptors videos.

Is That Your Onion in MySpace?

From a press release announcing that The Onion is partnering with MySpace (primarily to bring video to the social network):

THE ONION BRINGS JOURNALISTIC INTEGRITY, CORRECT PUNTCUATION TO MYSPACE

Respected Pillar of Journalism Partners With Fledgling Unknown “Website”

"The news business is like the tobacco business: you want to reach new readers at as young and impressionable an age as possible," Onion president Sean Mills said. "MySpace was, of course, a natural partner in that regard."

It's good to see that they take the same care in writing their press releases as they do their hard news.

A World of Cool

Here's a Google Map mashup for cool hunters everywhere.  It overlays activity on the social product recommendation site ThisNext on top of a Google Map.  So now you can see what people in Morocco think is cool versus people in Seattle.

(Read my initial post about ThisNext here).

"50 Who Matter" Radio Interviews

I recently did a long radio interview on an Atlanta-based talk show called "Technology for Business Sake."  The topic was our July cover story: "The 50 Who Matter Now."  I talk about how the list was put together, and discuss some of the people who made it, including Steve Jobs, the Fake Steve Jobs, Susan Decker, Michael Moritz, Arrianna Huffington, and Mark Zuckerberg—and those who didn't—like Bill Gates and Kevin Rose.  (Rose, as it happens, came in No. 9 in our reader poll, after attracting an impressive 295,314 votes.  We decided to put Digg CEO Jay Adelson on the list, instead of going with the more predictable choice).

I also did a WSJ Radio interview on the same topic.  I start about a third of the way in.

Fake Ad for Microsoft's Surface Computing

Here's a terrific parody commercial for Microsoft's new $10,000 surface computing table. Enjoy.

(via TechCrunch)

Who Matters More: Kevin Rose or Steve Jobs?

I'm as big a Kevin Rose fan as the next guy, but is he really more important in the world of business than Steve Jobs or Bill Gates or Eric Schmidt?  You can vote right now online for who you think should have made it to the top of Business 2.0's annual People Who Matter Now list (which will come out in our July issue).

At last count, Rose was No. 2 (with 57.72 percent of all votes cast) versus No. 11 for Jobs (with a paltry 1.19 percentage of the votes cast).  I guess that is not surprising, given that Rose is the founder of Digg and has a huge online following of people who love to vote for things online.  I have a feeling that's also why Second Life chief Philip Rosedale is No. 3 right now.  The Fake Steve Jobs was doing pretty good in the rankings for a while too. 

While there is definitely some campaigning going on to get some people up higher on the list, my faith in crowd wisdom tells me that the rankings will sort themselves out. But for that to happen, votes need to be spread more evenly across all of the 100 candidates.  The main criteria is what these folks have done for the business world lately.

So go ahead and vote for Rose or Rosedale if you like, but throw in a few ratings for some of the others on the list as well, like Sergey and Larry, Richard Branson, Jeff Bezos, Arianna Huffington, Vinod Khosla, Michael Moritz, Rupert Murdoch, Susan Decker, Reid Hoffman, Michelle Kaufmann, or Ed Iacobucci and Vern Raburn.

Vote For The Next Web Awards

Attention all startup CEOs: The Next Web conference, Europe's underground version of the Web 2.0 conference, is coming up on June 1 in Amsterdam.  It was started by the young founders of Fleck.com because there really wasn't a conference for Web 2.0 types in Europe.  They are still taking submissions for startups who want to present at the show.  Two startups will be chosen from all of those submitted to address the crowd.

The big draw, though is the Next Web awards for "future accomplishments."  Anyone can vote for candidates including Google, Joost, StumbleUpon, Digg, NetVibes, Last.fm, and others in eight categories.  Cast your vote now:

I should mention that the Next Net is a media sponsor of the conference, along with TechCrunch and Read/Write Web.  Basically, that means I think it's a cool conference and agreed to spread the word.  In return, any Next Net reader who wants to attend can get 125 Euros off the registration price by clicking on this link.

Google Solves the"Last-Mile" Problem

Google is taking that whole "the Internet is a series of tubes" thing to heart.  They have figured out how to bypass the telcos and cable companies and give everyone free Internet access. 

No, it's not through electric wires.

It's through the plumbing system.  You send a long fiber-optic cable through your toilet to one of thousands of access nodes, and boom, you've got a fiber connection to the Internet.

It may sound weird.  But people have done stranger things to get free Internet access.

A JibJab at TV News

Another instant classic from JibJab (What We Call the News):

What We Call the News | Send To Friends | Funny Animations at JibJab

The World, According to Books

A Google engineer decided to make a map based on how many times each city is mentioned in books indexed by Google's Book Search.  The result is the image above, with the bright green areas getting the most mentions.  Presumably, Google searches more English-language texts, given the high distribution of green dots in English-speaking countries like the U.S. and India, compared to the vast white spaces in China, Russia, and Latin America.

Now, if they could only correlate the brightness of each dot to actual sales of the books in which they are mentioned. (Or better yet, make an interactive map that calls up the books in question whenever you roll your cursor over a given city).