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<title>Haaze.com / pnoressufujhh / Published News</title>
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<pubDate>Tue, 01 Mar 2011 08:11:00 +0000</pubDate>
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<title><![CDATA[With Marginize, the conversation comes to Web pages]]></title>
<link>http://www.haaze.com/story.php?title=with-marginize-the-conversation-comes-to-web-pages</link>
<comments>http://www.haaze.com/story.php?title=with-marginize-the-conversation-comes-to-web-pages</comments>
<pubDate>Tue, 01 Mar 2011 08:11:00 +0000</pubDate>
<dc:creator>pnoressufujhh</dc:creator>
<category>Gaming</category>
<guid>http://www.haaze.com/story.php?title=with-marginize-the-conversation-comes-to-web-pages</guid>
<description><![CDATA[The Web site Feld.com, which has the Marginize widget installed. This means anyone can join the discussion on pages like this one and others with the widget.(Credit:Marginize)PALM DESERT, Calif.--Since the beginning of time, or at least since the beginning of the Web, we've all used Web sites in solitude, regardless of how many social tools were available.But thanks to an application called Marginize, that dynamic may soon change. At the Demo Spring conference here today, Marginize talked about how, for what may well be the first time, social and collaborative Web browsing is finally here.The idea is actually quite simple. Using either a browser add-on--forFirefox, Chrome, orSafari--or a native application on sites whose publishers have opted-in, Web surfers can now see what other people are saying in real-time--on services like Twitter, Facebook, and Google Buzz--about the pages and the topics they're exploring.Until now, said Marginize founder and CEO Ziad Sultan, people have been able to talk all they want about what they're seeing on the Web, but have been limited to doing so in &quot;social silos.&quot; Marginize, by comparison, aims to bring the conversation about a page right on to that page. A simple window that pops up when you click on the little Marginize tab that sits on the side of the page shows the real time discussion around the topic, and gives users the ability to easily jump into that conversation by tweeting or posting to Facebook or by responding to what others have already said.For several months, a group of users has already been applying Marginize to more than half a million sites, Sultan said. Those beta users have each downloaded the browser plug-in and employed it to bring the service's social aspects to sites in which they are interested. But that didn't do anything for people who haven't downloaded the add-on, let alone those who haven't even heard of the service in the first place.At Demo today, the company announced the launch of its publisher widget, which makes it possible for owners of sites of all kinds and sizes, from personal blogs to large news sites, to proactively place Marginize functionality on their pages. Now, for example, Brad Feld, who writes about entrepreneurship for Boston.com, has the Marginize widget embedded in his page, allowing anyone to see and participate in the ongoing conversation taking place on his page.There's no doubt that in order for Marginize to be truly useful, it needs a large critical mass of users. After all, there's not much point to looking for a conversation that isn't there because there aren't enough people discussing a page or its topics. But if the company can lure in enough users, and enough sites embed the tool, there's a real chance that it could permanently change the way we interact with Web sites. <br/><br/>0 Vote(s) ]]></description>
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<title><![CDATA[Samsung's 2011 NX lens lineup]]></title>
<link>http://www.haaze.com/story.php?title=samsungs-2011-nx-lens-lineup</link>
<comments>http://www.haaze.com/story.php?title=samsungs-2011-nx-lens-lineup</comments>
<pubDate>Mon, 21 Feb 2011 08:10:21 +0000</pubDate>
<dc:creator>pnoressufujhh</dc:creator>
<category>Technology</category>
<guid>http://www.haaze.com/story.php?title=samsungs-2011-nx-lens-lineup</guid>
<description><![CDATA[60mm lens(Credit:Samsung)In the face of early February's partner announcements for Micro Four Thirds and Sony E-mount lenses, Samsung must be feeling the squeeze for its proprietary NX-mount interchangeable-lens camera (ILC) family. That may explain why Samsung's announcement of its entire 2011 NX lens roadmap now strikes me as a somewhat too-little-too-late-ish. Samsung offers an NX adapter for Pentax K-mount lenses, and Novoflex offers a variety of &quot;dumb&quot; adapters (which can't take advantage of the cameras' features), but these are hardly substitutes for real third-party lenses designed for the system.18-200mm lens(Credit:Samsung)More annoyingly, the company has, once again, refused to provide pricing, even for the products it expects to ship soonest. The point of the announcements is to keep you from buying into a competing system, but witholding prices undercuts the warm-and-fuzzy feeling of future certainty the announcement is supposed to generate. But I'll view this as Samsung kindly providing us with the opportunity to use our imaginations. So let's play &quot;The Price is Right.&quot; In the summary table below, I've offered my valuation based on the slim specs provided by Samsung. If they look a bit low, that's because I've taken into account how small the NX ecosystem is and the typical quality of Samsung lenses. If they look high, well, then, oops.Note that in addition to the features mentioned, all the lenses support i-Function, Samsung's technology that allows you to use one of the lens rings to adjust shutter speed, aperture, exposure compensation, white balance, and ISO sensitivity.&amp;nbsp'18-200mm f3.5-6.3 ED OIS 16mm F2.460mm F2.8 Macro ED OIS SSA 85mm F1.4 ED SSA 16-80mm F3.5-4.5 OIS Special featuresVoice Coil Motor (VCM) for quiet movie operation&amp;nbsp'SuperSonic Acutator (SSA) for speedSSAVCMCommentsSounds like a typical general-purpose alternative kit lens, but it gets very slow (narrow aperture) towards the end of the range.A me-too fast, wide-angle pancake-prime offeringSeems like a nice macro option.What looks to be the highest-end lens option for the NX mount, it has the potential to be a decent portrait lens.This really should be available earlier in the year, as it sounds like a better kit lens alternative than the standard 18-55mm model currently offered.I wouldn't pay more than...$349$299$399$699$499ShipMay 2011July 2011August 2011October 2011December 2011<br/><br/>0 Vote(s) ]]></description>
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<title><![CDATA[CloudCrowd: An assembly line for content]]></title>
<link>http://www.haaze.com/story.php?title=cloudcrowd-an-assembly-line-for-content</link>
<comments>http://www.haaze.com/story.php?title=cloudcrowd-an-assembly-line-for-content</comments>
<pubDate>Mon, 31 Jan 2011 08:10:09 +0000</pubDate>
<dc:creator>pnoressufujhh</dc:creator>
<category>Mobile &amp; Electronics</category>
<guid>http://www.haaze.com/story.php?title=cloudcrowd-an-assembly-line-for-content</guid>
<description><![CDATA[&quot;We're doing to service industries what China did to manufacturing,&quot; CloudCrowd CEO Alex Edelstein tells me. That's not exactly a warm and fuzzy concept for a journalist, as the particular service industries that CloudCrowd affects are in the writing and editing space. CloudCrowd collects tasks from clients--currently translation and proofreading jobs--via its Serv.io site, and then distributes them to waiting workers via a Facebook app.Unlike the content farm Demand Media, where a computer assigns writing jobs to waiting workers based on popular search engine queries, CloudCrowd creates work when paying customers ask for it, so it's unlikely to be squashed by Google (still a risk for the newly public Demand Media). And unlike Mechanical Turk, which fractures jobs into minuscule Captcha-sized pieces and then simply reassembles the work units for customers, Serv.io jobs go through a fairly rigorous work flow, incorporating several layers of human workers double-checking and smoothing out each others' piecework.CloudCrowd CEO Alex Edelstein in the company war room, showing how translation tasks bounce around the globe.(Credit:Rafe Needleman/CNET) CloudCrowd's process breaks moderately complex editorial tasks into small, repeatable pieces that can be done by specialists. Some people make better first-pass translators, for example, than assemblers of the translated text. CloudCrowd may take the fulfillment out of building a finished product, but it also, says Edelstein, makes construction of products faster and leads to a more consistent quality level, as the Model T assembly line did when it was fired up. And, like industrial manufacturing did for consumer goods, CloudCrowd puts significant downward price pressure on the product it creates. Translation tasks go for 6.7 cents a word, less than a third the price traditional translation agencies charge. Turnaround is fast, too, at less than 24 hours. Even faster service will soon be available, Edelstein says.Enter the 'garble hunter' The Serv.io translation service begins by first doing machine translation of the job in question. Then, a &quot;garble hunter&quot; (a person) picks out the sentences that need further refinement. These sentences go to two translators in sequence, their work then goes to two editors in turn, and finally the finished product is delivered to the customer. Even with all these hands on the product, the cost to the consumer is low, thanks to efficiency of the work flow system, its capability to quickly and automatically direct work segments to specialists, and its capability to quickly tease out the pieces of the job that need human help compared to those that work fine with the machine translation (generally about 70 percent of any translation job). As a content worker myself, I had to ask Edelstein: Doesn't spreading jobs out to pieceworkers around the globe lower the actual amount of money a person can make  &quot;We pay above market rates,&quot; he told me. Perhaps true, but his service does level fees globally, and it also brooks no inefficiency: Workers must continue to accept piecework jobs and maintain quality (as judged by other workers in the CloudCrowd work flow system) in each tiny task to earn and hold their places in the job queue. It really does make an editorial job into an assembly-line function. It's also true that a worker in a high-cost location may find himself priced out of the market as he's now competing with people in less affluent regions' remote contractor-hiring services like eLance and oDesk have already had this impact, and in those services you hire actual people instead of paying for piecework.Serv.io clients get cheap and fast translating and proofreading. More services are coming.(Credit:Screenshot by Rafe Needleman/CNET)Still room for talentEdelstein says his services won't impact people who need or provide difficult or high-end services like analysis or creative writing' Porsche still sells $100,000 911s while Ford cranks out Fiestas. Edelstein also says a service like his increases the sizes of markets by making editorial services more affordable. In the multibillion-dollar global translation market, the impact should be good for workers, he maintains, even if it may cause a big upset at the 6,000 or so U.S. translation businesses that currently hire them. Economically, Serv.io's translation service makes intuitive sense, as does its other current offering, proofreading. The company will also soon turn on its editorial assembly lines for other services, some of which seem a bit less appropriate for the model: Press release writing, resume creation, online research, Web site content creation, and &quot;blog building.&quot; That's getting into the Demand Media space, but Edelstein strongly believes his content will be better, thanks to the work flow system CloudCrowd uses. As much as it feels like I'm digging my own grave writing this story, there is a good economic argument for putting some content creation and editing on an assembly line. With a proper oversight system, you can achieve a level of, if not excellence, then at least reliable consistency. And maybe--just maybe--shunting the less-interesting jobs to the assembly line workers will leave craftsmen with more time to work on the hard, interesting, and genuinely difficult tasks' and leave publishers and advertisers with enough money to pay them to do so. If not, I will try to land an apprenticeship at a Porsche factory.<br/><br/>0 Vote(s) ]]></description>
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<title><![CDATA[Is Groupon slowing down VCs wager $950M that ita4a4s not]]></title>
<link>http://www.haaze.com/story.php?title=is-groupon-slowing-down-vcs-wager-950m-that-itâÂ€Â™s-not</link>
<comments>http://www.haaze.com/story.php?title=is-groupon-slowing-down-vcs-wager-950m-that-itâÂ€Â™s-not</comments>
<pubDate>Mon, 30 Nov -001 00:00:00 +0000</pubDate>
<dc:creator>pnoressufujhh</dc:creator>
<category>Latest News</category>
<guid>http://www.haaze.com/story.php?title=is-groupon-slowing-down-vcs-wager-950m-that-itâÂ€Â™s-not</guid>
<description><![CDATA[Herea4a4s the big announcement that everyone knew was coming: Daily deals site Groupon has raised $950 million in new funding.The fact that Groupon was raising the round, and that it had raised $500 million already, came to light last month through a filing with the Securities Commission. TechCrunch reported Friday that Kleiner Perkins Caufield &amp;amp' Byers was participating in the round &amp;8212' the firm has been aggressively moving back into social networking with its $250 million sFund for social startups and an investment in Twitter that valued the company at $3.7 billion.And yes, Kleiner is listed among the investors in Groupona4a4s new round as well as Andreessen Horowitz, Battery Ventures, Greylock Partners, Mail.ru Group (formerly Digital Sky Technologies), Maverick Capital, Silver Lake, and Technology Crossover. Previous investors New Enterprise Associates and Accel Partners werena4a4t on the list, although both firms declined to offer any real comment when PEHub asked whether they sat out on the new round.Groupon has attracted its share of critics, including guest columnists in VentureBeat, who question whether the companya4a4s growth is sustainable. Clearly there are plenty of investors willing to bet that Groupon is still on its way up. In an interview with The New York Times, company president Rob Solomon said that there were still many more small businesses worldwide for Groupon to recruit, and that the company plans to offer those businesses more services.In the press release announcing the funding (titled, in Groupona4a4s typical tongue-in-cheek fashion, a4AGroupon Raises, Like, A Billion Dollarsa4), the company says that in the last year, it expanded from 1 to 35 countries and grew from 2 million to more than 50 million subscribers.The company previously walked away from a $6 billion acquisition offer by Google. The press release doesna4a4t disclose a valuation, but TechCrunch reported that it was $4.75 billion.[Image of Groupon CEO Andrew Mason lovingly Photoshopped by VentureBeat Executive Editor Owen Thomas]Next Story: Foodspotting bites into $3M of new funding Previous Story: AMD CEO Dirk Meyer &amp;8212' the man who outwitted Intel &amp;8212' resignsPrintEmailTwitterFacebookGoogle BuzzLinkedIn      DiggStumbleUponRedditDeliciousGoogleMore&amp;8230'          Tags: daily deals, group buyingCompanies: Andreessen Horowitz, Groupon, Kleiner Perkins Caufield &amp;amp' ByersPeople: Andrew Mason, Rob Solomon          Tags: daily deals, group buyingCompanies: Andreessen Horowitz, Groupon, Kleiner Perkins Caufield &amp;amp' ByersPeople: Andrew Mason, Rob SolomonAnthony is a senior editor at VentureBeat, as well as its reporter on media, advertising, and social networks. Before joining the site in 2008, Anthony worked at the Hollister Free Lance, where he won awards from the California Newspaper Publishers Association for breaking news coverage and writing. He attended Stanford University and now lives in San Francisco. Reach him at anthony@venturebeat.com. (All story pitches should also be sent to tips@venturebeat.com) You can also follow Anthony on Twitter.VentureBeat has new weekly email newsletters.  Stay on top of the news, and don't miss a beat.<br/><br/>0 Vote(s) ]]></description>
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