ReadBurner just came out last week, and today we see another service that’s set out to take advantage of the economy that Google Reader has afforded us. In finding new ways to sieve value from feeds, SharedReader has created a meme of sorts for the most popular feeds being shared on Google. As with ReadBurner, participants will need to give up their shared feeds in order to make SharedReader work to the best of its ability.

So far there don’t seem to be many participants on the site, and there isn’t much to look at either. You can check out the Most Popular, or you can view the Recently shared feeds. For each item on the site, you’ll also see the users that have shared it. Click on one of these usernames and you’ll be directed to their shared items home page on Google. While more visually appealing and less of a Google-themed knock-off than ReadBurner, SharedReader doesn’t seem to have quite the same amount of functionality as ReadBurner. There are less tracking and filtering options.

Moving beyond the differences from ReadBurner, there’s also very little interactivity throughout SharedReader and little incentive being proposed by the network convincing you to join. Will these “feed meme’s” replace the likes of Technoraiti or even Digg? With such a narrow focus on Google’s shared feeds and limited interactivity, it’s unlikely that these “feed memes” will be little more than a novelty for the time being, but I can see that there is a good amount of developmental effort being placed into sites such as SharedReader and ReadBurner for the purpose of making them central resources within an online community.

[via louis gray]

With everyone addicted to their Crackberries, and all the fanatical devotion to the iPhone, it is easy to forget that the old standby of Palm still has significant market share in the world of mobile computing. Palm late this evening sought to remind us that they’re still aware of what’s going on, and posted an update alerting the world that the mail client for Palm devices, VersaMail now has improved GMail compatibility.

The new product updates give enhancements to the GMail IMAP compatibility and an easier setup wizard to import GMail setting. Additionally, there are improvements that help eliminate the silent failure of email with Microsoft’s Direct Push Technology during an ActiveSync using Exchange.

Those Palm users who haven’t yet started using GMail or don’t have something set up on a Microsoft Exchange ActiveSync server don’t have any reason to update, but it is a good move by Palm to bring some relevancy to the platform.

60Frames is a syndication network that the writer’s on strike could take advantage of (probably). While this isn’t stated explicitly on 60Frames website, there’s no better time to get some out-of-work writers to help it create content. What 60Frames does is offer a “studio” of sorts where artists can create and publish their original content. So far 60Frames has received $3.5 million from Spot Runner and United Talent Agency (UTA).So in keeping up this trend of bringing old media structures into new media realms, 60Frames is in fact adopting the same model that MyDamnChannel and National Banana have used. That means more merging of Hollywood with the Internet. It’s all fun and games now, but soon there will be more regulation, rules, and all sorts of downers that will all but ruin the current experience.

Oh, I’m getting ahead of myself. Let’s enjoy the freedom that currently is.

I already mentioned that 60Frames is bringing in some traditional media business tactics into the realm of web distribution, and I meant it. While the exact business model for 60Frames has not entirely been revealed, there will be ads, and the revenue generated from said ads will be split with the artists themselves. Looking at 60Frames’ website, there are three prongs to the company’s attack: go after the artists, go after the distributors, and go after the advertisers. That means you’ll find 60Frames content spread all over the web, across various video-sharing networks and probably applications, too.

It’s a necessary tactic for online media these days, and one that is taken seriously when it comes to video. One technical weak spot at the moment for 60Frames is in the area of their embed options on its videos. It lacks a one-click copy option and to embed a smaller size requires mental math and manual editing of the code.

Apparently video is the end-all, be-all when it comes to the opportunistic methods of media moguls, media mogul wannabes, and anyone else halfway interested in online media for the intention of making moolah. Since the perfect formula has yet to emerge, be prepared to see a lot more networks like 60Frames pop up, especially with the current television economy (meaning, it sucks). Everyone’s turning to the Internet for just about everything, and that includes entertainment.

Instead of wading through mounds of user-generated crap, why not tune into something professionally created? Sure, there’s Hulu, but they’ll eventually run out of scripted material, and considering the increasing ways in which device makers are hoping to bring my Internet content to my HDTV, the market has only begun to get things cracking. So far 60Frames has a few featured programs, including PhakeIt, Cockpit (by Big Fantastic, the team that produced Prom Queen for Michael Eisner’s start-up, Vuguru.), and Erik the Librarian. See, you’re intrigued already.

Two recent updates for The Weather Channel incite a few larger questions regarding the company’s direction for 2008. First up, a new mapplet for Google Maps makes weather conditions more readily available on a map. Secondly, The Weather Channel has been chosen as Google’s exclusive provider for supplying weather conditions, forecasts and radar for Google Earth.

Looking back at what The Weather Channel has been up to lately, it’s rather evident that the weather resource is looking to quickly expand its reach across the web. From MySpace to the iPhone, AdMob, and video across multiple networks, The Weather Channel has been very busy.

And this isn’t the first time that the Weather Channel has worked with Google. It had already worked with Google Earth to create a layer on the satellite map service. The new mapplet gives you more customization options, which should be good for Googly map lovers out there. As Centernetworks noted, the questions looming for the Weather Channel concerns its relationship with its other partners, which includes Microsoft for its mapping technology.

Will the Weather Channel be shifting gears and teaming up with Google for its mapping technologies as well? Google has been working hard to get its maps in as many places as possible, from your mobile to your car. So Google Maps may be hoping to use this existing partnership with The Weather Channel to get its foot in the door in order to push its technology for use on The Weather Channel’s own website.

 Things aren’t looking very stellar for LGBT social network PlanetOut. The company is looking for a way out itself, and is “exploring strategic alternatives.” Read between the lines, and that means that PlanetOut is looking to sell. Having already sold off part of its company, RSVP Vacations, PlanetOut was hoping to trim down and focus on its core business. However, this tactic doesn’t seem to be working for the resuscitation of the company overall, and it looks like the end is very near.

PlanetOut has brought in Allen & Co. for the process of seeking its alternatives, but the company has also warned that it may not be successful in its exploration of a sale. PlanetOut’s revenue has dropped significantly, and this really may be the end for PlanetOut. While MTV Networks takes on LGBT networks to expand its collection of niche sites, it’s not surprisingly becoming more difficult for other stand alone sites to continue down the path to success.

While there have been a good amount of funding and acquisition announcements in the past year and a half, there has also been a lot of trimming down of staff and portfolios as previous acquisitions and developments within larger companies are reevaluated for monetary contribution, growth potential, and overall success rate. This is in part due to advancements in technology that sometimes render a particular acquisition defunct, and in part due to ever-changing trends with our evolution of Internet culture.

[via paidcontent]

Ohloh is taking its tracking and ranking tools and opening it up to teams that would like to do the same for their own developers. The open source directory already offers rankings of the nation’s top open source coders, but now you’ll be able to let other developers use its technology in order to track their own open source team of coders, reports VentureBeat. Access the new tools from Ohloh Labs here.It’s a useful tool that many may want to employ for their own purposes, but it’s also a tool that some would liken to Slife, when compared directly to tools designed for tracking work within a team environment. As Ohloh explains, Ohloh will release Ohcount, which is a command line tool and library that counts up lines of source code and subsequently analyzes the language of that source code. The lines of code contributed by a single developer are counted by Ohcount, so you can see the performance of each developer, and you can track their progress. Ohcount supports 35 languages, including C/C++, Java, Ruby, HTML and XML.

The new tracking tools may be specifically helpful for teams with multiple developers, not in a competitive sense but in a collective sense, granting an insightful look at the overall standing of a team, which often reflects on a project better than looking at a single coder’s stats. Ohloh will be releasing additional tools for this new open source tool for developers to take advantage of, eventually offering all of its technology to the open source community.

Stock-market video blog Wallstrip is losing its face. Show host Lindsay Campbell is leaving Wallstrip, but she’s not going far. With Wallstrip having been acquired by CBS last year, Campbell is officially an employee of CBS. And Campbell is staying with her parent company, possibly to do her own show. Was Campbell a primary reason for CBS taking on Wallstrip in the first place?According to Silicon Alley Insider, that’s exactly what’s going on here. One of the reasons CBS acquired Wallstrip was to secure Campbell’s participation in future projects. Wallstrip founder Howard Lindzon has confirmed Campbell’s departure on his blog, and has also named Julie Alexandria as Campbell’s successor. If you’ve watched the Wallstrip show, you may have noticed that Julie Alexandria has in fact been a guest host for the show, so she’s already familiar with the crew and process. For the most part, there’s no doubt that Alexandria will be able to hold her own in filling Campbell’s shoes.

What’s equally important to look at here is CBS’s long-term plans for its Internet properties, and its distributed content. In addition to the acquisition of Last.fm around the same time as Wallstrip, CBS has also added to its Internet radio efforts and is experimenting with free wi-fi in certain regions of Manhattan. Is CBS developing a more inclusive and better-competing Internet hub for media distribution, with an emphasis on for-web content? That would be an interesting development to follow.

Seekler the lists and review site that consists of wiki-like contributions from its users, has launched its public beta and has added a few changes to the site according to its private beta testing. We first mentioned Seekler here, and I got a chance to dig deeper into the site’s private beta, offering a fuller review here. Many of the changes that Seekler has made since I last took a look in fact were in regards to some of my suggestions.Seekler now enables you to add descriptions for the lists you create, as well as tags. In an effort to keep Seekler simple in design and navigation, the description and tags are collapsible according to your personal preferences. This was a pretty important distinction for Seekler, as the inclusion of tags and descriptions lets users know that Seekler isn’t just a site for creating “top 10 lists.”

Other new features include the ability to control the number of items viewed on a page, and an associated URL button beside list descriptions in order to access outside information (i.e. a link to a movie trailer on the IMDB page for a film on your list). Another interesting improvement made to Seekler is the inclusion of lists that are found on third-party sites. This is a feature often found on other review sites that are typically specific to product reviews.

It’s this weighted crowd-sourcing approach that validates the information found on the primary site, by incorporating content found from elsewhere on the web, that’s been created by an authority on a particular subject. Combine this with user-generated content and Seekler’s wiki-like approach, and you’ve got a site that’s looking to incorporate as much content as possible in an easily searchable manner for visitors and contributors.

With the rising efforts for user-generated search engines, semantic search and Wikia’s own entrant into search engine territory, it’s difficult to imagine an aggregating resource tool that doesn’t apply all of these tools in order to make it searchable and easy to use for contributors. I still wouldn’t mind seeing the inclusion of multimedia as supplements for the online resource, as well as some additional automated tools for gathering, organizing and recommending information as well.

Just a scant seventeen hours ago, Ars Technica leveled a number of accusations at the new caretakers for the Twitter-like service Jaiku. They alleged that “Google has allowed Jaiku to languish” and described a “backlash from frustrated users who are beginning to mass-migrate to Twitter.”  There have also been other reports of many third-party Jaiku client applications that haven’t been able to access Jaiku at all during the past week, and for the brief periods when the servers don’t return 504 gateway errors, the access to the servers are so slow as to be unusable.We’re taking Ars Technica’s word for it, frankly, because none of us here at Mashable are active Jaiku users (and I think Pete may be the only one around here with an actual account). Still, something has to be said for the new caretakers for the service - they apparently pay attention to the blogosphere. They posted just a bit ago on the official blog a response that doesn’t exactly answer everyone’s questions, but does let everyone know that Jaiku survived the merger into Google.

First, we know the Jaiku site is currently not as responsive as it should be. The issue is that users (some of them spammers) are starting to add new feeds to their accounts at a more rapid pace, so we’re working on cleaning up the database to get the site back to its normal level of responsiveness. We should have everything sorted out soon; in the meantime, thanks for your patience.

Second, I know you’re all excited to hear what’s next for Jaiku and what we’ve been working on since joining Google. To be honest, a lot of our time in the early going was spent on getting to know Google. And, of course, a little R&R during the holidays. But we’ve also been working hard on the next steps for Jaiku, and are already making progress on what I think are some cool new ways to help you stay connected with the people you care about. We can’t share any of the specifics right now, but stay tuned.

So there you have it.  We’re sorry, we’re working on it, and some new stuff is coming down the pike we think you’ll like.  If they every open back up to allow registrations from the public, then Twitter users should feel right at home.

CNet has made a few changes lately, skimming down some portions of its portfolio in order to refocus on its core competencies, while also adding in new video features and making additional acquisitions as well. Despite the changes the company has had, its shareholders seem to think differently about the direction in which the company should go. Just days after a consortium of investors led by Jana Partners, with a 21% stake in CNet, appeared to want to take over the company’s board of directors, Jana Partners in fact upped its voting stock from 8.1% to 10.5% in CNet.

While CNet seemed to want to fight the consortium’s attempt to take over the board of directors, this recent change in fact gives Jana more decision power and proposed some extra seats on the board in the process. While the stock was acquired by Jana in the open market, CNet still appears to be opposed to Jana taking more control in the board room.

Is CNet slowly being forced into the direction its stockholders wants it to go? Will Jana and the other investors get their board room shuffle? As Stan mentioned a couple of days ago, the eventual direction of CNet can be determined by its current board, or its stockholders, and neither group may fully rectify CNet’s situation.

[via Pulse 2.0]