Beta-testing the video ad-supported Free All Music
Originally posted at Digital Noise: Music and Tech
Originally posted at Digital Noise: Music and Tech
Bing, the rising star from the Microsoft empire was on a roll just a month ago it seemed, spilling out new features rapidly and inhaling market share.
December was quite the turn around for the engine, which watched its market share drop from 10.7% to 9.9%. That works out to an 7.5% drop in Bing market share, month over month.
Admittedly, this is merely a one month dip to date, but such a large shift is hard to ignore. If this trend continues for the next two months, Bing will have experienced a full quarter of problems.
Total searches for December: 9.9 billion. This of course means that it is at the moment quite simple to calculate market share. You get 10% for every billion searches you serve a month. Bing: 986 million, which rounds to 9.9%.
According to analytics tracking firm Compete, Bing saw a 3% rise in total unique visits, and nearly a 7% rise in total visits. Both numbers are impressive for a website of Bings size. The estimated 7% rise in visits worked out to a rise of twenty million visits in December.
Something to note: the compete data claims that Bing had just shy of 300 million visits in December. It seems unlikely that Bing averaged some three searches per visit, so the two data sources seems to conflict somewhat.
Taken all together: Bing is still growing, but Google has resumed its dominant, expansive position. Bing needs to work harder to differentiate itself from the the giant Google. However, with Google perhaps leaving China in the near future, perhaps Bing can use that to its advantage.

Epix, the “Hulu of Movies” joint venture between Paramount, Lionsgate, and MGM studios, just added a new distribution partner. Mediacom Communications, the seventh largest cable TV provider in the U.S., will join Verizon’s FiOS and Cox Communications as outlets for the premium entertainment venture in April 2010.
Epix offers an interesting twist on the web premium content model, with access to EpixHD.com limited only to customers of its cable television partners. Only those who subscribe to FiOS, Cox, and now Mediacom Communications can access the online version of the Epix TV channel. Epix HD features an on demand library culled from the library of over 15,000 films from its three backing studios.
The strategy behind partnering with Mediacom is to reach the primarily small town and rural community audience that Mediacom serves. It represents yet another stepping stone in the overall march of premium video content to the web.
Do you spend any time on Epix or Epix HD? What do you think of the service?
Tags: cox, Epix, epix hd, Film, fios, Lionsgate, mediacom, MGM, ONLINE VIDEO, Paramount, premium content, tv, web video
Since Google Wave's launch, we've seen a slew of real-time, short-form collaboration tools.
From massively multiplayer Q&A app Quora to invite-only, group-scrapbooking tool TwitAlbums to developer-centric, code-coaching resource Squad, the web is rife with sites focused on making groups more communicative and more efficient. Teambox has popped up on our radar as "a Twitter-like project collaboration tool," and it fits right in with this trend.
This app allows users to share text, tasks and files. Much like topics in Quora, activities in Teambox can be followed by users who need to stay updated, publish updates to their team or view the related stream of information. Projects are invite-only, and users can choose who the collaborators will be and determine permissions for each person.

Communications occur through threaded topics. Participants in a conversation are notified via email when their topic is updated. Tasks are updated in series of comments and act as to-dos that can be assigned, modified and completed.

The app further allows for sharing files of any size, and profile pages allow supervisors or others to see what a particular user has been working on lately.
The Twitter-like UX is familiar and fast, and the interface seems simultaneously lightweight and robust. For project management and team collaboration - including distributed teams - we can see this application going over very well.
Best of all, Teambox is a free and open source project. The app is built using Ruby on Rails, and while the web version of the app is perfect for small- or medium-size teams, larger companies can host Teambox on their own servers - which might also be good news for users and admins concerned with data security.
These distinctions set Teambox apart from Basecamp, a popular product from 37signals that also provides web-based project management tools.
Although the web app is completely free, Teambox also offers paid features, such as server installation for self-hosting, customer support and white-label versions.
What do you think? Is Teambox's Twitter/Basecamp mashup something you could use at your company or for a group side project? Let us know what you think of the application in the comments.
Or, for a bonus round of backstory, check out the ReadWriteWeb Spain interview with founder Pablo Villalba.
Discuss
As you probably know, Haiti was struck by a devastating earthquake last night. According to the latest estimates, over 100,000 people may have died and large parts of the island's infrastructure have been destroyed.
Here is a short list of things you can do right now to get help to Haiti. Just watch out for unsolicited emails. Quite a few scammers and spammers are trying to profit from this catastrophe and have set up fake donation sites and are running phishing scams.
As Twitter's Evan Williams just noted on the official Twitter blog, giving money to relief organizations has never been easier. All you need is your phone.
Of course, all the major relief organizations also have websites and will happily accept your donations. Our friends at Mashable have compiled a good list of worthy organizations.
Here are a few Twitter lists you can follow to stay informed.
If you know of other news sources, local bloggers or organizations, let us know in the comments.
Discuss
Thankfully Netflix's CEO Reed Hastings wasn't just stirring up hype last week when he said the chances of Netflix on Nintendo were "excellent," as the deal's just been inked and will debut in early Spring.
Joining the PS3 and Xbox 360, Netflix will bring its streaming video service to the Wii, offering movies and TV shows to subscribers of the $9/month DVD mail-out service. You'll need to grab a software disc from Netflix though in order to get streaming rights on your Wii, but it's sent to your pad for free so you can't quibble much about that. Worth pointing out though is that the Wii can't give you anything more than 480p video resolution, so don't go thinking this Netflix deal is the best news ever. [NY Times]
This is incredible.
Brandon Neely, a former Guantanomo Prison Guard, decided to join Facebook and upon signing up, begun searching for former army acquaintances. He came upon the profile of Shafiq Rasul, a former prisoner and decided to send him a message. To his astonishment, he received a reply.
The initial message spun into a longer conversation, eventually resulting in a face-to-face meeting.
The meeting was arranged by Gavin Lee, a BBC correspondent, who learned about the Facebook messages from Mr. Rasul, who lives in Britain. The BBC paid for Mr. Neely’s flight to the UK in exchange for the opportunity to record their initial meeting between Neely, Rasul and another former prisoner, Ruhal Ahmed.
Neely’s first words, “You look different without a cap.”
The former prisoner’s “You look different without the jump suits.”
Mr. Neely, has since granted confessional-style interviews about the abuses he says he witnessed there. In a message to Mr. Rasul, Mr. Neely apologized for his role in the imprisonment.
Like I said, incredible.
Watch the initial meeting below.