The Good NET Guide

Posts Tagged ‘central’

Don’t get too excited. You just can’t run out and buy one of these Sony Blu-ray players and expect to watch 3D content tonight. Oh no.

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Sony’s 3D Blu-ray player spotted at Best Buy

An Italian security site ran an interview with Pwn2Own contest winner Charlie Miller about secure systems.

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Security expert: Flash is horrible

The Mac mini has long been a HTPC fan favorite. It’s small, quiet, yet powerful

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Apple prepping a Mac mini with HDMI? And Blu-ray?

It looks like some major consolidation is about to go down in the Central European Internet market, and in particular Poland.

According to local newspaper reports, the largest Internet group in the region, Naspers/MIH Group, is conducting due diligence of assets belonging to DST (Digital Sky Technology)-owned holding Forticom, including the “Facebook-of-Poland” Nasza-Klasa.pl which has 23 million users. Naspers/MIH Group and DST already together own the largest Russian online portal Mail.ru.

A consortium of investors led by The Walt Disney Company is currently engaged in advanced talks to invest in Bus Online, China’s leading in-bus digital media and advertising company, sources tell Reuters.

The deal, which would provide Disney with a new platform to promote Mickey Mouse in China, is oddly said to involve Google, which is a minority investor in the consortium according to the news agency’s sources.

The consortium reportedly planned to acquire a stake of between 30 and 40 percent in Bus Online for more than $100 million via a purchase of old and new shares to be issued by the company in private placements. Bus Online has raised approximately $80 million from VC firms and banks since 2004.

Google was expected to take only a small stake in the Bus Online deal compared to Disney, but Reuters’ sources stressed that no agreement had been signed yet and senior Disney execs are planning a trip to Beijing to meet Chinese media regulators about its China plans first.

Nevertheless, Google’s involvement in the negotiations is rather odd.

The search and digital advertising giant recently took a stand against censorship in China, after having been hit with ‘highly sophisticated and targeted attack’ on its corporate infrastructure from the country. Google threatened to shut down its business operations in China if the government did not agree to let the firm operate an uncensored search engine there, an issue that is still unresolved at this point.

Trackle, the personalized web and realtime feed tracker, is going pro with the launch of premium tracking services aimed at marketing and PR professionals looking to track mentions of clients across the web. Trackle.com’s web service lets users create personalized RSS feeds for data such as the latest crime in a user’s neighborhood, fluctuating airline ticket prices, updated job listings, sports scores and more.

On Trackle, marketing, PR and sales professionals can set up realtime tracking alerts for key words to track press coverage and mentions across Tweets, blogs, Facebook, LinkedIn and the web. The initial service will allow users to enable “Trackles” for a select number of keyword categories, including company, person, brand, SEC filings; website changes and LinkedIn updates. Trackle will email and SMS alerts for mentions and even provide users with graphs and charts detailing results. The service is available for $9.99 per month.

Trackle, which launched a year ago, recently became more social by allowing you search and follow other users’ Trackles by keyword. The search platform also lets users filter the sources by credibility, social network and more. Trackle will also show users who have similar interests, so you can. The startup is also trying its hand at setting up Trackle button on sites to provide instant tracking options directly to consumers to allow users “Trackle” an item or feed from anywhere on the web.

Trackle now has 100,000 users and is generating 2 million alerts of information each day. It’s sort of like Google Alerts on steroids. But the premium service will face competition from the plethora of social media and web tracking services in the space, including Viralheat, Socialseek and others. As we’ve said in the past, the major obstacle Trackle will face is gaining more users and becoming viral. But it seems that the site is looking to engage PR and marketing professionals instead of consumers and with its reasonable pricing, it could find a loyal following in this sector.

The internet is all akimbo with stories rolling in concerning the Palm Pre being sold for $99 with a two-year contract at neighborhood Best Buy locations. Although the Pre is nowhere to be found on Best Buy’s website, here’s an in-store photo from PreCentral.net for your enjoyment.

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Palm Pre at Best Buy for $99

I’m not a big fan of the folding bikes because they can never fold small enough or go fast enough for my taste.

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This folding bike is not for the faint of crotch

The real estate slump is still dragging the economy down, but real estate sites that can help people save money or cut down the time it takes to find a decent home are still hanging on. Today, regional online brokerage Redfin is expanding into parts of New York for the first time, including Westchester, Long Island, and Queens (Manhattan and Brooklyn still remain beyond its reach). And in California, it now covers Sacramento and the Central Valley. These will be added to its existing markets of Boston, Chicago, Seattle, Washington DC, Baltimore, and the San Francisco Bay Area.

More significantly, Redfin is adding up to 200 additional data fields thanks to last year’s settlement between the Department of Justice and the National Association of Realtors, which requires multiple listing services to make data available online and share it more broadly. Anything a real estate broker can tell a client can now be put online. Redfin CEO Glenn Kelman is now finding that traditional real estate brokers are more willing to hand over the keys to the kingdom. Depending on the area, Redfin will now list property details such as price history, the sellers’ mortgage history, cumulative days on the market, lot square footage, and will display addresses on a map. Other sites such as Trulia are also taking advantage of these relaxed rules.

Unlike Trulia, though, Redfin is not just a real estate search engine. It is also a discount brokerage trying to with agents and partners. Redfin is trying to rewrite the rules of the real estate industry. Instead of taking a percentage of a sale, it charges a flat fee to home sellers of either $5,000 or $7,000. And for buyers, it refunds up to half the brokerage fee. Traditional brokers don’t like this, but in this economy some of them are even partnering with Redfin.

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