Hits and misses 2.0 (07)2007: Misses The first-leaked reports of MySpace News made it sound like a dream come true for both advertisers, and enthusiasts of sites like Digg and Reddit. A social news service working off the massive, multimillion member userbase of MySpace seemed like a great idea, but just seven months later the place seems deserted with no real changes since the late April launch. Front page stories are only getting a small handful of votes, while the competition is getting hundreds and sometimes thousands of votes and comments per item.  NBC leaving iTunes There are many reasons for the split, but the No. 1 is money. NBC Universal simply wanted more per show than Apple was willing to allow. NBC has since moved its various content to other distribution channels like Hulu.com (seen above earlier as a hit), and its own streaming service, NBC Direct. After years of advertising iTunes as the place to get your fix of portable, digital, and multiplatform copies of shows like Scrubs, Battlestar Galactica, and The Office, ditching the iTunes media store just made the company look greedy.  Livestreaming The technology and platform solutions for livestreaming are here and wonderful, but we're giving this one a miss because the content is simply not up to snuff. While JustinTV was a fun project to watch, what it's evolved into is simply not worth your time. Justin Kan's original solution was to strap a camera to his head and go on daily adventures, but the service has devolved into a slew of people sitting in front of their Webcams talking to a bored audience. Recent second-generation Livestreaming service ModMyLife puts a slight spin on the idea by giving users a bit more control, but it's not enough to get us away from professionally produced content. We're still really impressed with services like Mogulus, UStream.tv, and Operator11, but besides Chris Pirillo, who is making this technology interesting for the watchers?  Creepy ad platforms Nearly everyone with a start-up is hoping to make some money, although two new monetization services of 2007 stuck out as a little creepy. The first was Facebook's Beacon, which sounded like the best of both worlds for advertisers and big companies, who would have a direct way to get some free advertising from Facebook users using their services. The company's big faux pas was to make the default method of input opt-out, meaning if users weren't savvy to uncheck one of those little check boxes when signing up for a service, or making a purchase, the information would be beamed back to Facebook. Despite a massive backlash, the company took a longer than expected time to respond, and eventually caved in to switch to opt-in by default, meaning users would have to check that box to participate in the program. The other platform is The Pudding, which lets you make VoIP calls to people's landlines for free. The one caveat is that the company running the service will be monitoring your conversations and attempting to pull in contextual advertising. Somehow we're OK with this going on with our emails and Gmail, but the idea of voice calls with friends and family just creeps us out.  HD DVD's hexadecimal decryption key/Motion Picture Association of America (MPAA) Trying to keep something secret that's been put on the Internet is just about impossible. This proved to be the case earlier this year when Digg.com's front page exploded with stories that either related, or simply were the secret code to decrypt the copy protection from the still-struggling HD DVD format. The act of exuberance was a mob reaction to Digg's attempt to remove the stories to be in compliance with a cease and desist order from the MPAA. Incidentally, Digg's traffic skyrocketed shortly after--at least according to Alexa. This garnered a miss from us, not for Digg, but from the MPAA for attempting to censor Digg's stories to preserve a pretense of control over a format nobody really cares about.  Citizendium If you Google Citizendium, you'll see the Wikipedia entry about it is pretty much the first link besides the site. That's part of the problem. Citizendium was created to solve the problems that can arise from letting Wikipedia be written by anyone with a keyboard and a 56Kbps modem--regardless of intellect or educational background. It's essentially Wikipedia, but with the hopes of having credible, scholarly sources that will both write the content and help moderate everyone else. While Citizendium has already ramped up a considerable amount of articles, why not put that effort toward bettering the larger, more established Wikipedia?  Zoho We like Zoho, and on paper the number of products it's launched this year puts Google to shame. But more important than volume is polishing the ones that are there, which simply hasn't happened quite as much as we were hoping. We want integration and less disconnect between services. We're also looking for a little more pizazz and something to pull us away from our desktop office apps. We're hoping 2008 is the year of integration for Zoho.  Vampires and Zombies And Ninjas vs. Pirates vs. I just slapped you with a sheep, etc. These Facebook apps might have started off cute, but now they're cluttering up the Facebook experience. The original poke was simple, subtle, and ingenious. Everybody could do it, and no one was left out. Now we've got to add an app to even tell you to stop it in the way you'll understand.  3D Mailbox When's the last time that email from mom needed a DirectX 9 capable video card to read it? 3D Mailbox was designed to make e-mail fun and exciting by turning your messages into onscreen 3D events, be it bikini-clad babes, or spam (represented by overweight beach goers) getting eaten by sharks. The company's latest foray has moved locales to LAX airport, with airplanes representing messages, complete with cargo for attachments. We found the app to be difficult to use, and a massive resource hog. As CNET Download.com's Peter Butler noted in his hands-on, "I don't know anyone who wants to spend more time managing email." The one saving grace is the promotional video, which will leave your jaw agape.  iPhone apps The premise of Web applications built for Apple's shiny new iPhone is simple: Turn any Web service into a simple app that you can use with your fingers. The major snag? You can't download them to launch right off the phone and use local resources like mass storage and saved files. The other snag is speed, which is hampered by the outdated EDGE network. While an SDK for developers and 3G version of the iPhone are due out in 2008, early adopters have spent most of 2007 dealing with slow speeds, and having to hack their phones to get proper localized applications that can help overcome the EDGE network's inadequacies. Got any hits and misses of your own? Share them in the TalkBack.
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