beta Archive

I remember back in the late ’90s when KTU hit the radio airwaves in NYC. For what seemed like the first five years the station played music, they referred to themselves as the “all new KTU”. It seemed like the station was no longer new after the first year or so. (perhaps that’s why some blogs refer to companies as startups over half a decade later!)

This afternoon I received an email from Yahoo regarding their Calendar and Notepad products. The email is labeled as a service announcement and starts with the following text:

“Yahoo! Calendar Beta will soon be renamed “All-New Yahoo! Calendar,” and Yahoo! Notepad Beta will soon be renamed “All-New Yahoo! Notepad.”

The email continues…

“The old Yahoo! Calendar and the old Yahoo! Notepad will close soon, and we will move you to the All-New Yahoo! Calendar and the All-New Yahoo! Notepad in the coming few weeks. We will automatically move your Calendar and Notepad information for you. After we move your information, you will receive an email from us confirming that the information has been moved.”

The email then provides a list of features of the All New Yahoo! Calendar and All New Yahoo! Notepad products. Lastly there’s a link to read more about the new features of the All New Yahoo! Calendar (or ANY!C for short).

So basically here is the net of the email – the current Yahoo Calendar is now the “Old Yahoo Calendar” and the new Yahoo Calendar is now the “All New Yahoo! Calendar”. But soon the “All New Yahoo! Calendar” will become the “Yahoo Calendar” and the “Old Yahoo Calendar” will become the “Retired Yahoo Calendar”. If you are using the “Old Yahoo Calendar”, your info will be moved automatically into the “All New Yahoo! Calendar” which will then, at some point in the future, be renamed to the Yahoo Calendar. Get it?

Update November 10 – Google has officially announced the rollout of the new Google AdSense interface.

Earlier today we received a tip from a source that Google has begun to beta test a new user interface for Google AdSense.  Doing some basic research, I noticed the first mention of this new interface last week by Justin Germino of Dragon Technology Blog. I can’t find any mention of the new user interface on the Google AdSense blog – although a post about blocking categories does display the new interface.

Below are some screenshots of the new Google AdSense interface. It looks and functions in the same fashion as Google AdWords and appears to be a good upgrade from the current version which, I believe, has been in place since the early days of Google AdSense.

It appears Google is moving all of their reporting tools into a common interface design. Last week Google launched a new interface for their RSS tool FeedBurner.

Continue reading “Google AdSense Launches New User Interface Beta” »

Website monitoring service Pingdom has completed a bit of analysis about Google and their products. They found that 45% of their products are in beta currently. Some of the more popular Google products in beta include: Gmail, Google Docs, the new Chrome browser and Google Video. Playground products weren’t included in the 45%.

Interesting to note that Google App Engine is a "preview release" as opposed to a beta. Why is Google keeping their products in beta? Pingdom notes that companies normally don’t charge for beta services while Google does charge for some of their beta products. I’d disagree, there are plenty of services that charge while in beta. It can help to validate a product.

The beta tag is like a shield to protect against bugs and downtime. If a service in beta is down, it’s easy to say "hey it’s in beta, give them a break!"

If Flickr could move out of beta, certainly Google could do it too.

The online office market continues to heat up. Everyone wants a piece of the Microsoft Office pie from Zoho to Google to SlideShare along with hundreds of other startups. SlideRocket is a Powerpoint replacement and is moving into public beta today.

SlideRocket launched in private beta in March and you can check out initial reviews on Techcrunch and ZDNet. SlideRocket offers free and paid versions of their presentation application. Phil Wainewright notes regarding an additional component to their business model:

One innovative extra that will help SlideRocket make money is its plan to offer a marketplace of data and asset services for paid use in presentations — for example, market sizing data and other material from analyst firms, or stock images from photo libraries. It’s the sort of money-making add-on that Microsoft ought to have done long ago with PowerPoint — it’s the classic ’software plus services’ play.

As startups continue to realize that there’s money in them hills – those hills being small to enterprise businesses, we will slowly see a shift to useful utilities instead of yet another social network.

TripSay is a new travel social network launching in private beta today that claims to "offer you less but more". The idea is to provide you with specific recommendations that are targeted to you and your needs. The company notes that they use a unique recommendation engine to proactively match destinations, places, sights, content, and activities for people across their network of friends as well as with those with similar tastes.

The signup process actually takes you through a variety of questions to help the system target what you might like. This is the first time I’ve seen a travel social network ask me background questions before entering the system. You can contribute content and earn points — I never really care for point collection, it’s lame.

There’s location information from WikiTravel and images from Flickr. Their Google Maps mashup is pretty interesting. The overall design is very slick and Ajaxy.

The main content seems to come from "tips" you can leave on the map about certain locations. This should tie into the mobile so tips popup as you get close to locations they have tips for. I don’t see a way to leave travel reports like Sosauce does.

The key of course with this and all other social networks is their ability to get users to signup and also remain as a user. Why should I stop using TripAdvisor’s community and move over to TripSay? The key is making sure my friends are here. TripSay looks like it could use a boost from Dopplr or Plazes so that we know where are friends are currently.

If you’d like a TripSay invite, send an email to: info@tripsay.com with the subject line, CenterNetworks.

Earlier today we reported on Strands’ launch of their new social aggregation service. After creating a diversion at the Strands offices, I was able to grab 10 beta keys. If you’d like one, send in a request – the first 10 get them so be quick.

Don’t take one unless you actually plan to use it!

We reviewed Seesmic last week and described it as, "a video sharing service just like YouTube, Vimeo, Viddler, etc. The difference is that Seesmic has stripped away much of the "extras" that come with the other services. Almost every video sharing service allows for web cam uploads, Seesmic just seems to make it easier."

Getting an invite to Seesmic is harder than finding a name for your new Web 2.0 service. Luckily I located founder Loic Le Meur in Paris and after feeding him several rasberry and cod crepes and after forcing him to walk up the Eiffel Tower blindfolded, he agreed to give me some invites. You see what lengths I go to for the CN reader?

We’ve got six (6) invites to give away. Want one? Leave a meaningful comment below that includes the word 2008 in it. Codes gone.

In case you missed it the first time, here is my demo video: