n2nprivacysolutions.com

Other services in this space include Diigo (coverage), Evernote (coverage), Fleck (review), and TrailFire.

(Credit:
CNET Networks)

In addition to Word docs and PDF files, the service works with entire Web pages. You can plug in any old URL and it will take a snapshot of the page in a similar fashion to Iterasi (review). These same notes will show up on a source list you maintain. Clicking on any of them will take you right to where you left the note on the saved page, which will stay the same even if the source content changes.

(Via Web Worker Daily via Lifehacker)

Leave notes on any bit of document, PDF, or Web page with A.nnotate. You can even add tags to each note and sort through them later.

By default the notes are anchored to where they’ve been put on the document, but you can simply move them about, or sort them on a one-page listing that will organize them by time or who wrote them.

The service is free to use–to an extent. Each document you open costs credits. You get 150 free each month, and the standard document costs 5 credits a page. If you want to work on docs with others, and work on several larger, multipage documents, there are premium plans that expand the amount of credits you have at up to 50,000 per month.

Power users will get the most use of the small notes. You can re-color them one of 21 shades and give each one tags, either from a preselected list or by making your own. This is one of the simpler ways to organize corrections, things to delete, and additions, so whoever gets the document back can sort out what needs to be done and very easily turn it into a workflow.

This afternoon I’ve been playing with a real fun annotation tool (at least fun compared with Microsoft Word). It’s called A.nnotate, and it’s one of the simplest tools I’ve come across, letting you add small (or very large) notes, corrections, or scribblings that float on top of the document like little widgets.

The headline speaker for the evening was Michelle Obama, wife of presumptive Democratic presidential nominee Barack Obama.

A highlight of the first day included a tribute to long-serving Democratic Sen. Ted Kennedy of Massachusetts, as well as an unscheduled appearance on the stage by Kennedy, who is battling brain cancer.

The Democratic National Convention kicked off Monday night in Denver as thousands of delegates gathered to celebrate their political party and prepare to nominate their presidential ticket.

Katie Couric of CBS News offers a recap of the day in this 45-minute video:

Find more deals, coupon codes, and bargains on CNET’s Shopper.com.

The Aspire features a 2GHz dual-core Pentium processor, 2GB of RAM, a 160GB hard drive, and a 15.6-inch wide-screen LCD. It also has a multiformat DVD burner, but I think its most impressive asset is 802.11n Wi-Fi (which also supports b and g, natch). That’s a rarity in a budget-level notebook.

The Aspire weighs about six pounds and measures 1.5 inches thick, so it’s reasonably travel-friendly. As for horsepower, I think it has more than enough for everyday computing–and way more than your basic Netbook, which costs about the same (if not more). I haven’t used this particular model, but I’ve reviewed several Acers in the past year, and they were all very solid. Like most, this one has a one-year warranty. Great buy, IMHO.

(Credit:
Best Buy)

In the market for a new notebook (by which I mean one that’s actually new, not a refurb)? Best Buy has a pretty nicely equipped Acer Aspire for just $399.99 (plus sales tax in most states). Shipping will run you about $20, unless you live near a Best Buy store and can just pick it up.

As one of the firm’s investors told the Journal, “Perhaps they should have told us about this, but it was such a small deal. Would we have wanted a piece of it in hindsight? Sure. But for every one of these successes, there are a hundred failures.”

The firm’s investors weren’t notified and didn’t reap any of the benefits of Photobucket’s acquisition, and it didn’t help that Insight itself has been reported erroneously as one of Photobucket’s investors on occasion.

We all like a juicy, Smartest Guys in the Room-ish scandal, but legal experts quoted in the Journal indicate that Insight’s executives weren’t technically bending any rules. The venture firm focuses on later-stage investments, and Photobucket at the time had three employees.

This instance of VC deal making doesn’t deserve much scandal mongering other than wondering what kind of beef the anonymous tipster has against Insight Venture Partners. But the broader issue deserves a look: to what extent should fund executives make their investors aware of personal investments? It’s debatable.

The Wall Street Journal, coincidentally also owned by News Corp., ran with the tip. The publication explained that an early investment in Photobucket had been made on behalf of Insight Venture Partners’ executives, excluding the investors in the firm–which include, among others, the endowment fund for Yale University.

There’s something funny going on in the venture capital world: a tipster pitched multiple media outlets the story that some sketchy business had surrounded the early-stage investment in photo-sharing site Photobucket, a 20 percent stake in a company that eventually was acquired by News Corp.’s Fox Interactive Media for about $300 million.

The Mars project, which was implemented in conjunction with NASA, is intended both for casual investigation of our planetary next-door neighbor, as well as serious research. NASA and Google hope scientists and other researchers will use the new Google Earth Mars feature to share data about the fourth rock from the sun.

While you might never become an astronaut and have the chance to ride a Mars Rover on the Red Planet, Google has now rolled out an Earth-bound alternative for the masses.

(Credit:
NASA/Google/JPL/University of Arizona)

Additionally, the new Mars features allows Google Earth users to view much of the most recent satellite imagery from NASA’s Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter, as well as other craft circling the planet. And users are able to add their own generally sharable 3D content to the larger map of Mars.

With Google Earth 5.0, which was unveiled Monday, users can now explore Mars in the same way they’ve been able to instantly view 3D images of much of our own home planet for several years in previous versions of the software.

“The mode enables users to fly virtually through enormous canyons and scale huge mountains on Mars that are much larger than any found on Earth,” NASA said in a statement. “Users also can explore the Red Planet through the eyes of the Mars rovers and other Mars missions, providing a unique perspective of the entire planet.”

(Credit:
Google/NASA/USGS)

The Mars feature of Google Earth 5.0 lets users see the Red Planet from the perspective of rovers like the NASA Mars Pathfinder Rover.

• Click here for more stories, and images, on Google Earth 5.0.

NASA said the arrangement with Google was a benefit of the Space Act Agreement its Ames Research Center, based in Moffett Field, Calif., in the heart of Silicon Valley, signed with Google in 2006. As part of the agreement, NASA and Google have agreed to work together to present the space agency’s data sets to the world. As such, NASA Ames, as well as Carnegie Mellon University, the SETI Institute and other organizations, teamed with Google on the Mars project.

With Google Earth 5.0, users can now journey to the planet Mars, where they can see 3D views of the Red Planet and dive deep into its canyons.

My experience has been that many Facebook users have simply turned off Facebook Chat. But with a younger, more entertainment-focused feel, MySpace may have better luck with in-browser IM. And it’s a strategic tactic, too: Having lost the membership-count battle to Facebook months ago, MySpace is trying to increase its edge in user engagement.

The News Corp.-owned MySpace isn’t ditching its downloadable desktop IM client, though. The two are interoperable, the company said.

(Credit:
MySpace)

It’s about time: MySpace’s formerly desktop-only instant-messaging client, MySpaceIM, is going in-browser. The company is beta-testing it with Canadian users but plans to roll it out to other English-speaking countries (including the U.S.) over the next few weeks and then to other regions in the following months.

To that end, it started letting its members edit photos on the site last week.

The new MySpaceIM, anchored at the bottom of the browser window in its own toolbar, takes a format quite similar to Facebook Chat. It can also pop out into its own browser window. You can, in addition, IM with MySpace users who aren’t on your friends list, something that I don’t quite understand the benefits of, or you can toggle the privacy settings to always be “invisible” or to only accept IMs from people you’ve already approved as friends.

To be fair, MySpaceIM is already accessible from the Web-based Meebo.

The DemoFall lineup is after the jump…

You can see the full Demo list at the end of this post. But here are the top 10 companies I’d be paying the most attention to if I were going to Demo (I’m going to TechCrunch with Josh; CNET News writers Elinor Mills and Daniel Terdiman will be at Demo). I’ll do a list, or lists, for TechCrunch too, time permitting.

Rafe’s Top 10 previews from Demo
(Please note that I haven’t talked to all these companies yet, so my understanding of these pitches is incomplete, and my post-conference Top list will likely be different.)

The DemoFall and TechCrunch50 conferences launch Monday. Demo’s posted its list of it 72 presenting companies. TechCrunch will post a part of its list, we’re told, at 6 a.m. Monday.

The DemoFall companies:

Clintview by Clintworld: This is a financial analysis tool primarily for mobile phone carriers. It simulates customer behavior related to pricing and helps create pricing tiers and plans that generate the most revenue. It brings a disciplined approach to pricing services, which I think is smart. Might be applicable to paid Web services as well. CrowdSpring Private by CrowdSpring: The company is not new, but I still love the idea. It’s a new twist on the open marketplace for intellectual work. At Demo, the company will unveil CrowdSpring Private, which lets companies create their own, closed markets, so creativity doesn’t leak out onto the Web, heaven forbid. Infovell: Very interesting new search service. It lets you type in arbitrarily long queries, and then ranks results based on importance and frequency of word clusters. Also lets you use entire Web pages as queries, generating a “more like this” function that doesn’t currently exist. Could be great for researching complex medical or legal topics. Avego by Mapflow: Adds intelligence to casual carpooling with a
car-service-like gizmo that tells drivers where riders are that want to go where they are going. It’s hitchhiking 2.0: Scary but cool, and very green. PaidInterviews: Pays job candidates for going on interviews. Totally whacked economic model, if you ask me, but that makes it interesting. Plastic Logic: New science for electronic books, possibly competitive to existing e-Ink technology. Real chemistry at a start-up conference. What a breath of fresh air. SpinSpotter: Claims to spot bias and inaccuracies in news stories. Helpful, if it works. Although it will probably expode if pointed at the blogosphere. And who watches the watchmen? .tel by Telnic: One of several new companies that lets users create personal calling card Web sites using a new top-level-domain. I am highly skeptical of this model, but I want to see how it develops. WebDiet: Location-based diet helper. Gives you food advice based on what’s close to you. Unknown if it gives you an electric shock and shrieks, “Keep walking!” when you pass a McDonald’s. Xumii: Makes a service that access all your social sites from your mobile phone. Could be very useful for the younger, multiply-connected set.

Accordia Group, LLC
Adapx, Inc.
Alerts.com, Inc.
Arsenal Interactive, Inc.
Asyncast Corp.
Awind Inc.
beeTV
Best Buy
BizEquity Corp.
Blue Lava Technologies, Inc.
Cerego
Cinergix
Clintworld
CoreTrace Corp.
CrowdSpring, LLC
DesignIn, Inc.
Dial Directions, Inc.
DocCenter
Enterprise Informatics, Inc.
Familybuilder
ffwd.com, Inc.
Fortressware, Inc.
Fusion-io
G.ho.st
Green Sherpa Infovell, Inc. Intelius, Inc. Invision TV, LLC iWidgets, Inc. Kadoo Inc. Koollage, Inc. Mapflow, Ltd. Maverick Mobile Solutions, Pvt. Ltd.. MeDeploy Message Sling MeWorks, Inc. Microstaq, Inc. MixMatchMusic, Ltd. Momindum OpenACircle.com Paidinterviews, LLC Paragent, LLC Photrade, LLC PlanDone, Inc. Plastic Logic, Ltd. Qtask, Inc. Quantivo Corp. Radiant Logic, Inc. RealNetworks, Inc. Rebus Technology, Inc. RemoTV, Inc. Rudder, Inc. Semanti Corp. Sim Ops Studios, Inc. SitScape, Inc. SkyData Systems, Inc. SpinSpotter Telnic, Ltd. TetraBase LLC The Echo Nest Corp.. Tikitag, an Alcatel-Lucent Venture Toolgether TravelMuse Inc.
Trinity Convergence Inc. TurnTo Networks Inc.
UbiEst S.p.A. UGA Digital, Inc. Unity Solutions LLC Usable Security Systems Inc.
WebDiet Inc. Xumii Inc. Zazengo Inc.

See full Launch Week coverage of DemoFall and TechCrunch.

(Note #2: I have replaced one my original picks due to a press embargo error on my part.)

“We hope it’s only a matter of time before IPv6 is widely deployed,” the Google blog post read. “We will be doing our part.”

Right now, much of the world relies on the fourth iteration of the Internet Protocol, also known as IPv4, for its Web connections. The problem is, IPv4 facilitates only about 4 billion IP addresses, not enough for every person in the world to have one.

Google and others estimate that the IPv4 capacity will be “exhausted” sometime in 2011, which means that IPv6–which will enable each individual person on Earth to have nearly 3 billion networks–will potentially take over.

The IPv6 Google search is available here, but if you don’t have an IPv6 connection, it’ll come up as a broken link.

Google announced Wednesday on its official blog that Google search is now available over an IPv6 connection. What?

Better late than never, as the saying goes.

On Saturday, O’Reilly Media’s Tim O’Reilly put up a blog entry with a series of answers from Sun Microsystems CEO Jonathan Schwartz that were in response to Twittered questions from the audience at their Friday morning keynote address at the Web 2.0 Expo.

Afterward, O’Reilly offered a mea culpa on CNET News.com and via his Twitter account, saying that he had inadvertently had his mobile phone set up to receive only Twitter posts from people he follows. That meant that he didn’t see any of the audience’s questions on his phone.

(Credit:
O’Reilly Media)

O’Reilly Media’s Tim O’Reilly posted a blog Saturday with a set of answers from Sun CEO Jonathan Schwartz to questions posed via Twitter by audience members at the Web 2.0 Expo keynote address on Friday morn.

And in fact, this turned out to be a better outcome than if O’Reilly had taken a Twitter question or two because there were only a few minutes left in the keynote when he made the offer. This way, anyone interested in what Schwartz had to say got a much deeper set of responses from him.

The post was a result of O’Reilly’s having offered the audience at the keynote address the ability to ask questions of Schwartz via Twitter, but subsequently not posing any of those questions.

So, kudos to O’Reilly for following up and to Schwartz for taking the extra time to respond to the questions. This all turned out to be a good example, after all, of incorporating the backchannel into conference proceedings and showed that everyone involved had the class and courtesy to take the situation seriously instead of just blowing it off to bad luck.

This is a nice resolution to the situation. In his blog post, he presented Schwartz with 11 questions that had come from Twitter, along with the Sun CEO’s responses.

Eddie Wu, the software company’s managing director of OEM embedded devices in Asia, said the company expects to sell 20 million “units” of its software in the 2007-2008 fiscal year, which ends in June, according to the article. And the company expects to grow at least 50 percent annually over the next two years, he added. Microsoft sold more than 11 million units of its Windows Mobile software in its 2006-2007 fiscal year, which ended June a year ago.

What’s more, new phones using Google’s Android operating system will soon hit the market. And competitors such as Research In Motion with its BlackBerry devices and Symbian, which is used on Nokia and LG Electronics phones, are also expected to continue to grow.

Despite predictions for strong growth, Microsoft still faces tough competition, and it may have a hard time increasing its market share as competition intensifies. Apple is rumored to be getting ready to launch the 3G, or third-generation, version of the iPhone in a few weeks. The company has already announced software upgrades that should make the iPhone more appealing for business users.

A Microsoft executive in Asia told Reuters on Tuesday that sales will increase at least 50 percent over the next year as demand for smartphones picks up.

Windows Mobile is a software operating system used on smartphones. Companies such as Motorola, Samsung, and High Tech Electronics (HTC) have all released products that use it. And Sony Ericsson introduced a new Windows Mobile phone earlier this year at Mobile World Congress in Barcelona.

Windows Mobile 6.1 will be available on a number of manufacturers’ phones including HTC, Samsung Electronics, Motorola, and Pantech. And carriers including AT&T, Sprint Nextel, and Alltel have already announced that they will offer the upgrade.

Microsoft sees big growth for its Windows Mobile operating system.

Smartphones, which offer e-mail, Web surfing, music, and other Internet services, are growing in popularity. In the first quarter of 2008, sales of smartphones in the U.S. accounted for about 17 percent of all mobile phone sales, the NPD Group reported. This was an increase of 10 percent over the previous year. The increase in smartphone demand comes as sales of cell phones in general are declining in the U.S.

Microsoft has been working hard to cash in on the growing demand for smartphones. Earlier this year, Microsoft released version 6.1 of theWindows Mobile operating system. This version includes an updated browser, which is supposed to make Internet surfing on a mobile phone look and feel like it does on a desktop. The company also has added support for Adobe Systems’ Flash.

Wu told Reuters that the company is seeing the fastest growth in the Asia-Pacific region, the Middle East, Brazil, Russia, and India. Demand is also strong in Europe and the United States.