I had no idea that there was Web 2.0 Awards. But, as it turns out, there is . Actually, the folks over at SEOMOZ organized it and rated over 200 Websites in 41 categories. There list a great reference if you’re looking for a site in a specific category. Check it out.
One of my favorite bands has launched a new look website in support of their new album and tour. The Beastie Boys are back with a new album, The Mix Up, and a new web site. The website has all the usuals, tour dates, store and audio visuals in addition to lots of pictures and video from the tour and blog updates. This is how the Beasties describe there new site
All types of foolishness. Bloggishness, and even the odd new tour date. International, y’all! Hope you enjoy.
If you want to get a sample of what their new album sounds like then take a trip Labor Day weekend to George, WA’s for the Sasquatch festival . The Beasties will be playing along with a great line-up, including the original line-up of Bad Brains (w/ HR) also playing new material. It’s a shame I can’t make it. Darn. The Beasties new album is all instrumental, meaning they play their own instruments in the spirit of Pollywog Stew and Ill Communications.
Techcrunch is reporting that the folks that bring us The Pirate Bay, is planning to launch a streaming video site. The new site is expected to be at thevideobay.com. This new site will be Youtube-like except that they’ll probably be ignoring DMCA take down notices. Look for thevideobay to get a lot of attention quickly and be the subject of many legal inquires.
There’s a company out of Boulder called Optibike which manufactures what has to be one of the best commuter bikes available. There bikes range in price from $5k to almost $8k, which is a bit steep for most people. The bikes can be peddled when you feel like getting some exercise or you can flip the switch and ride uphill via the electric motor. You can go up to 50 miles on one charge, depending on the model. Hopefully, as more people get on the “green”, saving the earth thing, we’ll start to see more products like the Optibike but hopefully with a better price tag.
We have our 2 year anniversary coming up in July and realized that there hasn’t been any significant change to the look of the site since it’s inception. So, we did a redesign and moved from the Movable Type platform we were using to a much better WordPress platform. I’m glad to be moving away from MT as it was beginning to be impractical work with. I originally chose the MT platform because it only requires one installation for running multiple blogs. However, I should have started with WordPress from the beginning and just dealt with the multiple installations and logins. WordPress is an awesome tool. And because the community is so active, there are plugins for just about anything you want. Now that we have a new look site, we’ll need to keep the cool content coming. Keep a look out for more regular postings and some other cool features to be added soon. Thanks to everyone who has supported this blog thus far.
With Joost “officially” launching the other day, but not having a regular sign-up/ download page. You have to know someone to send you an invite. I offered invites last week and still have some left, but now thanks to Gigaom, you can go directly to Joost and sign-up for an invite.
In other Joost news: They have inked a deal with Warner Brothers to stream content for their Before They Were Mega Stars channel and WBTV: SCI-FI FIX. Read more at Techcrunch .
Amazon S3 announces lower bandwidth prices starting June 1. Get all the details here.
Current bandwidth price (through May 31, 2007)
$0.20 / GB – uploaded
$0.20 / GB – downloaded
New bandwidth price (effective June 1, 2007)
$0.10 per GB – all data uploaded
$0.18 per GB – first 10 TB / month data downloaded
$0.16 per GB – next 40 TB / month data downloaded
$0.13 per GB – data downloaded / month over 50 TB
Data transferred between Amazon S3 and Amazon EC2 will remain free of charge
New request-based price (effective June 1, 2007)
$0.01 per 1,000 PUT or LIST requests
$0.01 per 10,000 GET and all other requests*
* No charge for delete requests
Storage will continue to be charged at $0.15 / GB-month used.
“The end result is an overall price reduction for the vast majority of our customers. If this new pricing had been applied to customers’ March 2007 usage, 75% of Amazon S3 customers would have seen their bill decrease, while an additional 11% would have seen an increase of less than 10%. Only 14% of customers would have experienced an increase of greater than 10%.”
According to Mashable, Joost is launching today. You still want be able to sign-up for an account unless you get an invite. But, if you have an account already you can send an unlimited amount of invites to whomever.
I’ve been using Joost for a few months now and haven’t been very impressed. For starters, they have very little content and the quality sucks. However, they have some really great community features that will be a big hit, if they solve the aforementioned issues. I understand that they’ve signed lots of content deals, so I guess we’ll just have to wait and see.
If you need an invite for joost, just drop me an email with your name and email address and I’ll be happy to send you one. My email address can be found on my about page.
This looks pretty awesome. Featuring some of the best skate artists around. Including the legendary Jim Phillips. Read more and find out the dates at Transworld Skate.