Google Chrome Will Support Add-Ons, User Scripts [Google Chrome]

Source: http://feeds.gawker.com/~r/lifehacker/full/~3/397471359/google-chrome-will-support-add+ons-user-scripts

InformationWeek confirms that Google Chrome will have add-ons, a move that could have an enormous impact on Chrome's viability among the power users and early adopters in the Firefox camp. In addition to regular extensions, Chrome will also support scripts à la Greasemonkey:

"There's two different kinds of add-ons," [Google engineer Ojan] Vafai said. "The Firefox things extend your browser, so to speak, and then there are user scripts. We intend to do both of those in Google Chrome." Greasemonkey's founder, Aaron Boodman, actually works on the Google Chrome team.

Additionally, Vafai says Google will work to ensure its extensions are more stable than Firefox, where "there are problems with instability." That statement may sound like slap in the face to Mozilla, but Chrome will likely be a boon no matter which of two browsers you prefer.

Mozilla CTO Brendan Eich, joining the panel along with Vafai and Microsoft Internet Explorer platform architect Chris Wilson, said that Mozilla was looking at how Google treated tabs as a potential way to improve stability when dealing with browser add-ons. "There are good process-isolation tricks that Chrome does that we're looking into, so we're simply going to look at better isolation techniques for security and integrity," he said.

The upshot: No matter which browser you choose in the end, Chrome and Firefox will push each other into innovative, fast, and hopefully more stable territories with each release.

Web 2.0: Google Chrome To Support Add-Ons [InformationWeek via Gizmodo]

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Virtual World Marketing That Works: My Top 3 Tips

Source: http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/OmMalik/~3/397267453/

So last year, most people decided that marketing real products in virtual worlds like Second Life doesn’t work. Since then, however, I’ve come across some avatar-driven advertising campaigns with very impressive numbers. In Gaia Online, for example, users grabbed over a million virtual copies of a Toyota Scion; in Second Life, a promotion for the IMAX screening of the latest “Harry Potter” movie was credited for boosting the movie’s ticket sales online.

Why do campaigns like these work where others have failed? I discussed that at a presentation I gave at the Web 2.0 Expo this week in New York. Here are my main reasons, packaged into three tips for future marketers:

Worlds With User-Created Content Are Good Marketing Venues:
Habbo Hotel from Finland-based Sulake Corp. reports strong results from its marketing of real-world products, primarily those associated with pop stars and TV/movies. Jeremy Monroe, Sulake’s North American director of marketing and business development, attributes this success to Habbo’s open-ended, creative game play. "At its core, Habbo is about social interaction, having fun building a world for self-expression and creative experiences,” Monroe told me. “Products…that exemplify these traits or can add to the existing sandbox of user-generated content game play are a great start." (While Second Life is entirely user-created, its most notoriously unsuccessful marketing campaigns failed to leverage this aspect of the culture.)

Market to the Web 2.0 Ecology Around The Virtual World:
Because virtual worlds are by their very nature dynamic and synchronous, a tremendous amount of activity related to them actually takes place elsewhere, in the Web 2.0 content-sharing ecology — screenshots sent to Flickr, machinima uploaded to YouTube, blogs and conferencing systems where users discuss their latest experiences. In Gaia Online, for instance, 30 percent of user activity occurs in the site’s messaging boards compared with 10 percent in the virtual world itself. To capitalize on this for the Scion campaign, Gaia VP Joe Hyrkin told me, they offered Scion-branded “driver’s licenses” that Gaia users could add to their forum signatures.

Serve Existing Community Needs:
With Second Life, new users enter a strange, overwhelming world without many objects in their inventory, and are usually too intimidated to talk with the locals. To serve this need, the agency behind a promotion for IMAX created “buzz agent” avatars who cheerfully engaged “noobs” in Second Life’s Welcome Area, offering them tips on using the interface — all while handing out “Harry Potter” memorabilia and directing them to IMAX’s retail site.

Of course, while these success stories might encourage marketers to take a second look at Second Life and other virtual worlds, the metrics of success still haven’t been agreed upon. That’s why many are eagerly awaiting a Forrester Research report that will try to define and standardize virtual marketing ROI. So am I. Stay tuned.

Disclosure: I gave a single paid speaking appearance at Gaia Online about my Second Life book.

Image: Gaiaonline.com

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Joost Now Offers Online TV with Only a Browser [Joost]

Source: http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/lifehacker/full/~3/396314077/joost-now-offers-online-tv-with-only-a-browser

Joost, the web-based provider of on-demand and live television, launched a browser-based version of its offerings this morning. While users of the service's Mac and Windows software can still get at their channels, Joost's new model allows anyone with Flash capabilities, and a temporarily-required browser IE or Firefox plug-in, to get at the good stuff. Joost is expected to go no-plugin-required next month—nice for those on Linux or non-standard browsers—but for now, it's a bit more hassle-free to watch live or canned television at work, or show a friend that old sitcom episode you were referring to. Joost is a free service; requires a sign-up and (for the moment) browser plug-in.

Joost [via TechCrunch]

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Five Best BitTorrent Applications [Hive Five]

Source: http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/lifehacker/full/~3/396340609/five-best-bittorrent-applications

The days of peer-to-peer file sharing tools ushered into popularity by the original Napster are over and done, and today, BitTorrent reigns supreme. It took some time for BitTorrent to gain mainstream popularity, but now that it has, there are a surplus of BitTorrent clients available vying for your downloads. On Tuesday we asked you to share your favorite BitTorrent applications, and now we're back with the five most popular choices. Keep reading for a breakdown of the top five and to pick the BitTorrent client you count on. Photo by djxspike.

Before We Get Started

By now BitTorrent is a common and popular file-sharing protocol, so chances are you all know how it works. If you don't, check out our beginner's guide to BitTorrent. If that's too elementary for you, our intermediate guide might be more your speed.

uTorrent (Windows)

uTorrent's first public release came three years ago today, having been developed with one goal in mind: To create a lightweight, efficient BitTorrent client. Once a popular independently developed app, uTorrent is now owned and operated by BitTorrent the company (not to be confused with the protocol). Despite a continued emphasis on keeping the application small, fast, and light, uTorrent is now loaded with features, including a personal fa! vorite, built-in remote control.

Deluge (All Platforms)

Deluge is a lightweight, cross-platform BitTorrent client. The look and feel of Deluge is very reminiscent of uTorrent, and as much as uTorrent has dragged their heels on porting to any platform other than Windows, Deluge is poised to really take hold as a uTorrent-for-the-rest-of-us. The app is a little over a year old, and in that time it's already built an impressive, feature-rich client. Another feather in Deluge's cap is that it supports a plug-in architecture, and though all plug-ins are currently included in the app, the extensibility it offers could mean a lot to Deluge as it continues to grow.

Transmission (Mac OS X/*nix)

Transmission is a free, open-source BitTorrent client with big download bars and an increasingly impressive feature set. Like uTorrent and Deluge, Transmission aims to remain as light on system resources as possible while still offering every feature most users could want or need. The application boasts similar features to most of the rest, like download scheduling and remote control, but also has nice integration with OS X, including Dock and Growl notifications and built-in Quick Look.

rTorrent (*nix)

rTorrent is a text-based BitTorrent client that runs on Linux and Unix-like systems. In contrast to the other options, rTorrent is about as spartan as you can get on features and interface. Most fans of rTorrent love that they can easily control rTorrent remotely over SSH, but a very nice web interface called wTorrent is available if you like the idea behind rTorrent but can't see yourself managing all your downloads through the command line.

Vuze (All Platforms)

Vuze (or the BitTorrent client formerly known as Azureus) is a free, cross-platform application written in Java. Often criticized for its memory footprint (70MB at startup for me—or about 10 times that of uTorrent), Vuze has recently re-branded; in addition to the torrent downloading, it's now a content distribution tool for original video. One of the biggest talking points for Vuze addicts is its distributed trackerless network, which allows users to find and download content from peers even when they can't find anything on a web tracker.

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Now that you've seen the best, it's time to vote for the BitTorrent client that gets the job done for you.

Which Is the Best BitTorrent Application?
( polls)

If you've picked your favorite BitTorrent client and you know our beginner and intermediate guides inside and out, check out our top 10 BitTorrent tools and tricks for more ! cool way s to get the most from BitTorrent.

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Stanford Offers Free, Full Courses Online [Education]

Source: http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/lifehacker/full/~3/396424437/stanford-offers-free-full-courses-online

The Stanford Engineering Everywhere program offers online access to full courses in the school's engineering program—including classes in computer science and artificial intelligence. Courses include lecture videos, reading lists, handouts, quizzes, tests, and even a social network for fellow online students. Not quite your speed? Check out other ways you can get a free college education online.

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