SimpleDB, one of Amazon.com's suite of online services that people can use to build Web sites or other computing operations, is out of private beta testing.

The service, lets programmers store database records at Amazon and extract specific data from it. Along with the shift to public beta testing, Amazon cut the price for storing data from $1.50 to 25 cents per gigabyte per month.

SimpleDB, introduced nearly a year ago is a newer arrival into the Amazon Web Services suite. Other services let customers process data, store raw data, distribute content, and store messages sent among different computers.

The company also announced basic level of use is free for at least six months. After various thresholds are met in data transfer and computer processing, customers must pay according to usage.

"We've made the business decision to go with SimpleDB even simpler than it was before. You can now get started for free. For at least the next six months, you can consume up to 500MB of storage, and you can use up to 25 machine-hours each month. You can transfer 1GB of data in, and another 1GB out," said AWS evangelist Jeff Barr in a blog posting Monday.

Among those using SimpleDB are Pluribo, Issuu, and MyMiniLife.com, Amazon said.

To make SimpleDB easier to use, Amazon said it plans to release a new interface similar to the SQL (Structured Query Language) widely used in databases today. It also plans a mechanism to let people more easily upload multiple items.

Another one bites the dust? Pownce, a would-be Twitter rival that was heavily hyped due to the involvement of Digg co-founder Kevin Rose, is closing its doors in two weeks.

It's not quite going away, according to a post from Pownce founder Leah Culver on the start-up's official blog. The technology has been sold to blog platform Six Apart, which runs TypePad and Movable Type. And its two full-time employees, Culver and Mike Malone, will be joining Six Apart's team.

"We'll be closing down the main Pownce Web site two weeks from today, December 15," Culver wrote. "Since we'd like for you to have access to all your Pownce messages, we've added an export function...(you can) import your posts to other blogging services such as Vox, TypePad, or WordPress."

Pownce, which is like Twitter with additional features like file-sharing, was so buzzworthy at its debut that people were auctioning alpha test invites off on eBay. It also had a business model, with paid accounts available for sale. But the Pownce hype died off, and Twitter gained more and more market share.

Additionally, we heard that the self-funded Pownce was trying to secure a round of venture capital. It looks like that didn't work out. This is, after all, not a great time to be raising money.

Six Apart is encouraging Pownce members to join its blog platform Vox. "We hope the Pownce and Vox communities can come together, just as the teams have, towards a better future," Six Apart's Chris Alden wrote on the company blog.

Pownce's two other co-founders, Rose and Daniel Burka, will become Six Apart "advisers."

We have some very big news today at Pownce. We will be closing the service and Mike and I, along with the Pownce technology, have joined Six Apart, the company behind such great blogging software as Movable Type, TypePad and Vox. We’re bittersweet about shutting down the service but we believe we’ll come back with something much better in 2009. We love the Pownce community and we will miss you all.

We’re very happy that Six Apart wants to invest in growing the vision that we the founders of Pownce believe so strongly in and we’re very excited to take our vision to all of Six Apart’s products. Mike and I have joined Six Apart as part of their engineering team and we’re looking forward to being a part of the talented group that has created amazing tools for blogging and publishing.

We’ll be closing down the main Pownce website two weeks from today, December 15th. Since we’d like for you to have access to all your Pownce messages, we’ve added an export function. Visit pownce.com/settings/export/ to generate your export file. You can then import your posts to other blogging services such as Vox, TypePad, or WordPress.

For our Pro members, we’ll be emailing you soon with more information about your Pro account.

As for the Pownce team, we’ll continue posting on Vox. You can find me at leahculver.vox.com, Mike at mjmalone.vox.com, and Ariel at arielwaldman.vox.com. The Six Apart announcement can be found on their company blog.

We really appreciate your continued support and understanding. Thanks so much for being part of the Pownce community.

One of the companies adopting Facebook's new log-in system, Facebook Connect, is CBS, parent company of CNET and publisher of Webware. I'm glad we're on board with this program, even if I do feel it's a bit of Faustian deal. Here's why.

First of all, CNET's own log-in system (which you see when you want to leave a comment on a CNET blog post, write a user review, or participate in other CNET community features) is not universally loved inside CNET. There are factions here at the company who want it changed, or even eliminated in some cases. There are also people who think we could be collecting more data from our registered users. The log-in system here is a political hot potato.

The conflict shows how important the log-in/registration system is, here and elsewhere. The value of a Web service lies in its users. More users means more opportunities to profit--by selling advertising based on what you know about your users, by selling the users services directly, by skimming a portion of the revenues users generate by traveling through your site, and by selling information about the users. If a site doesn't "own" its users, how can it profit?

It can, of course. You don't need to chain your customers to your store to get them to buy things from you. That is the realization creeping across the Web in the guise of new identify and registration systems, of which Facebook Connect is one.

Kinds of identity
Facebook Connect is a centralized identity service. That's not the only model. OpenID is a federated identity play--no one owns the database of users, and anyone can set up or use the standard. Functionally these distinctions are important, but asking users to understand them is a losing game. Users just want easy access to sites they like, and they want to trust that the sites they use won't steal their identity or use it in ways that are damaging to them.

That's why it's good to offer users more than one way to access a Web service. It's great if users can get into CNET services the old-fashioned way, with a CNET ID and password. But if we make it easy for Facebook users to come inside, that's great, too. How about OpenID? Sure, why not? It's a completely different architecture than Facebook's authentication system, but it's the job of people running Web sites to make access to services easy for users, which means supporting as many as possible and making it simple for users to choose the one they want to use.

No one here could look at Facebook Connect and turn down the opportunity to bring new registered users into our network. Even if they are registered elsewhere.

The downside, of course, is that we no longer "own" these users. If Facebook wants to turn off CNET, they can do it. Facebook also now gets monetizable information about the Facebook-registered CNET users. Not necessarily what the users do on CNET, but what they do elsewhere--valuable behavior data. The convenience of using Facebook log-ins has a price for both CNET and users: Facebook knows a lot more about you now.

But this is where we're going. Sites like ours will do what they do: create content and online services, and offer users community around those services. Users' identities are becoming untethered from the sites they use. More and more, services will be giving new visitors options for signing in to access the "registered" features of the sites.

Users get convenience. Sites get more users. Central registration authorities get incredibly valuable user behavior data. I do think everyone wins. Although nothing is free: there's more potential for abuse, on the part of sites and identity providers, than ever.

CNET is scheduled to launch support for Facebook Connect tomorrow.

Further Reading:
Facebook Connect appears set for expansion.
New York Times: Facebook Aims to Extend Its Reach Across the Web.
TechCrunch: Biggest Battle Yet For Social Networks: You, Your Identity And Your Data On The Open Web.

Google has published its plan to build into Chrome what is arguably its most requested feature: the ability to accept extensions that can customize how the open-source Web browser operates.

And guess what? Google's dependence on advertising notwithstanding, one of the extension examples the company points to is the ability to block advertisements.

The Chrome extensions document, spotlighted Saturday by Google programmer Aaron Boodman, doesn't include a timeline, but it does shed light on why the project is a priority for Chromium, the open-source project behind Chrome.

"Chromium can't be everything to all people," according to the document. "User-created extensions have been proposed to solve these problems: the addition of features that have specific or limited appeal; users coming from other browsers who are used to certain extensions that they can't live without; bundling partners who would like to add features to Chromium specific to their bundle."

When Google launched Chrome three months ago, it promised a Chrome extensions framework. Extensions are a popular feature of Chrome's most likely rival, Mozilla's Firefox, and one very popular extension is AdBlock Plus.

And AdBlock makes a specific appearance on the list of extension uses that Google said it would like to support eventually:

• Bookmarking/navigation tools: Delicious Toolbar, StumbleUpon, Web-based history, new tab page clipboard accelerators.

• Content enhancements: Skype extension (clickable phone numbers), RealPlayer extension (save video), Autolink (generic microformat data--addresses, phone numbers, etc.)

• Content filtering: AdBlock, Flashblock, privacy control, parental control

• Download helpers: video helpers, download accelerators, DownThemAll, FlashGot

• Features: ForecastFox, FoxyTunes, Web Of Trust, GooglePreview, BugMeNot

Demand for extensions is real.

In an unscientific CNET News poll about why people don't use Chrome, about 19 percent pointed to the lack of an extensions feature. And on Google's issue tracking site for Chromium, a Chrome extensions feature is the top-requested item.

"Of all the Firefox plug-ins, this is the one essential one," said Firefox user Ole Eichhorn. "Chrome is faster until you factor in all the cruft that gets downloaded as ads, then it isn't faster anymore. When Chrome supports AdBlock, it will be the winner, but until it does, Firefox is the only choice."

In its document, Google described some of its goals for Chrome extensions. The extensions should silently update, just like Chrome does. They should be isolated for security reasons and only get access to resources it's entitled to use. Installation should be easy, taking only two clicks.

They should permit rich user interface options--rich enough to implement some parts of Chrome as extensions, Google said. Among the interface options should be "toolbars, sidebars, content scripts (for Greasemonkey-like functionality), and content filtering (for parental filters, malware filters, or AdBlock-like functionality)," Google said. Some interfaces will require the user to grant specific permissions, such as "access to the history database" or "access to mail.google.com," Google said.

Google will play a major role in extensions, providing a central service that can be used to issue updates and to blacklist "malicious or harmful extensions" so the browser won't use them.

"It's likely in the future we may want to provide a consumer front-end which would allow users to more easily find the most popular, highest quality and trustworthy extensions," Google also said.

Power.com is an ambitious social utility that brings together all the networks you have on social networks such as Facebook, MySpace, and Orkut, as well on instant-messaging networks like AOL Instant Messenger, Yahoo Messenger, and MSN Messenger.

If you have have a presence on more than one network, it's worth a look, though it has its own interface that awkwardly sits on top of your existing services when you use it.

The biggest draw of Power is that it really does bring everyone in your networks together for you. On the Power start page, you can see all your contacts from all your networks, and all their status updates, and then quickly jump to user profile pages on whatever network they're on, or drop users messages. What Meebo does for instant messaging, Power does for social networks as well.

Power.com gives you one dashboard for all your social-network activity.

Meebo for social networks
Like Meebo, Power lets you connect to users without bothering with which network they're from. From the Send Message window in Power, you can select any number of your friends, from any of your networks, and send the same message to all of them. You don't even need a new login for Power; you can use one from one of your existing social networks.

One feature I was unable to test is the utility of updating all your social-network profiles when you update just one. So if, for example, you change your profile picture or a photo album on Facebook, you can have it changed for you on MySpace and Hi5. Or if you add an OpenSocial-compliant app on one service, you can also have it show up on the others.

The service puts its own interface on top of social networks like Facebook when you use it as your control center.

I see the utility, but I can't say that I enjoyed using the service. It works by placing a navigation bar on top of your social networks. The look and feel is different from your social networks, and I found switching between the Power interface and the native interface on my networks a little jarring. The options available in the bar change depending on which network you're using. And Power doesn't blend your contacts together; if a friend of yours is on Facebook as well as MySpace, the system doesn't offer any utility that leverages the fact they they are the same person.

If you're using Power to access pages inside your social network, you will also see Power features injected into your sites. For example, when viewing a Facebook profile, a tool to message multiple users at once (across all your networks) will show up underneath the usual entry box to post on another user's wall. If you go to Facebook directly, you don't get the new link.

The system will appear to embed new features inside existing social-network pages (Facebook shown).

When I used the service, I did find it cool to be able to see all my social-network friends in one place, on my Power dashboard, and to see my personal data feeds from all my networks aggregated into one.

I tried a version of Power that's become popular in Brazil and India over the past few months (Power is a Brazillian company). It has over 5 million users, Power execs told me. A new version of Power, targeted at U.S. users, is due to open up today. Support for services LinkedIn, Twitter, Flickr, Hotmail, Yahoo Mail, GMail, AOL Instant Messenger and Skype should arrive shortly, the company says.

Features still to come include useful mobile phone support; the current mobile version is very limited. The company is pitching Power as not just an end-user tool but a platform for building sites that enable "social Internetworking," or the linking of profiles and networks.

Useful, but not pretty
I like what Power is about. Like the products that bridge instant-messaging networks (Trillian, Meebo, Adium, Digsby, Pidgin, etc.), Power performs the very useful service of bridging social networks. However, I did find Power's approach to bridge building intrusive and confusing. I find managing my social networks baffling enough. Power gave me more capabilities, but it did not make things easier.

See also: FriendFeed.

Facebook Connect--the service launched last spring that lets members log on to other Web sites using their Facebook profile--appears to be entering a new phase.

The New York Times, in a big-picture story Sunday about the social network's plans to extend its reach across the Web, notes that the Facebook Connect service is gearing up for expansion:

TechCrunch's Michael Arrington chimed in with a related post about Facebook Connect and other such services, noting that Facebook had slated Sunday as the start of "a big press push" for Facebook Connect.

Facebook Connect was launched in May as a way for members to connect their profile data and authentication credentials to external Web sites, much like services offered by rivals MySpace and Google. Members can use their Facebook identities across the Web, including profile photos, names, photos, friends, groups, events, and other information. Facebook handles the authentication process and stresses that user security is a priority.

Some of the other announced Facebook Connect partners include Movable Type, Amiando, CBS.com, CNET (that's us, of course), CitySearch, CollegeHumor, Disney-ABC Television Group, Evite, Flock, Kongregate, Loopt, Plaxo, Radar, Red Bull, Seesmic, Socialthing, StumbleUpon, The Insider, Twitter, Uber, Vimeo, and Xobni.

How many iPhone apps does it take to make 10,000? It all depends on how you do the counting.

Apple watchers this weekend have been ruminating on the overall tally and on the counting methods following a report on 148Apps, a site that keeps tabs on iPhone applications, seen here in its entirety:

In just 142 days, the iPhone OS app store has added over 10,000 apps! An amazing feat for any platform. To commemorate this we've put up a special page. More on this after the weekend.

10,000 apps!

(We'll hazard a guess that there are actually on the order of 10K mini icons on that "10,000 apps!" special page. A listing to the right side of all those icons gives the total number of apps as 10,091.)

MacRumors.com, meanwhile, quibbles with the overall number, even as it says the actual 10,000 active app mark should be reached "in the next few days":

While several sites have reported that 10,000 iPhone Apps have been released into the App Store, the actual number of active iPhone apps that can be downloaded is about 9,676 as of today's count. The discrepancy comes from the fact that many apps have been removed from the App Store for various reasons (trademark infringement, discontinued apps, pulled and released).

The biggest category of iPhone apps, according to 148Apps, is games (2,333), followed by entertainment (1,122), utilities (1,015), education (737), and productivity (517). The average cost of the apps is listed at $3.12; about one-quarter are free of charge, while one is listed at $899.99.

People with a good-looking custom Twitter background have been the envy of ordinary Twitter users without the Photoshop skills to make their own. TwitBacks is looking to make those same rich profiles available to everyone. It only took me a few minutes to pimp out my Twitter profile with my very own custom background.

TwitBacks currently features six different themes that you can choose from, but promises more in the future. I couldn't get photo upload to work correctly, but I have seen other users who have been able to upload, so that may be an isolated issue. I would also like to see some more fields added for custom links and other information like LinkedIn, FriendFeed, Facebook profiles, and phone numbers.

All in all, TwitBacks is a nice little service with only a couple of little issues. I see no reason why these minor improvements couldn't be added in the future. If you're looking for a quick, good looking custom background for your Twitter profile, give TwitBacks a shot.

Thanks to Sam Sethi for pointing me towards the site.

Men in Black playing on Joost's new iPhone app.

If ever there was a Web service that experienced a rapid fall from grace, it was online video start-up Joost. What started out as a much anticipated new service ultimately fell short of expectations and has recently struggled for attention. Friday, Joost released an iPhone app for its service that might be a game changer. Joost's iPhone app lets users stream and watch any of Joost's 46,000-plus videos for free.

Say what you will about Joost's library of content, the concept behind this app is fantastic. The ability to stream a movie, TV show, or other piece of video content on the go is great. I know the technology is nothing revolutionary--after all the iPhone has had a YouTube app, complete with streaming video, since the device launched. Even given that, when you load up Men in Black on Joost, it just feels like a whole different ballgame. This isn't a video of a dog on a skateboard anymore. This is real, Hollywood-produced content, delivered to your phone, for free.

I have not experienced the major hiccups that very early users, like MG Siegler did, so those issues seem to have been taken care of. I did notice some occassional stuttering of the stream over Wi-Fi. I am, however, disheartened by the lack of streaming support over EDGE or 3G. Joost requires a Wi-Fi connection to work.

Even though Joost appears to have a really slick UI (in many ways it does), it breaks some of the conventions for UI design set forth by Apple. Flicking to view the next page of search results does work. However, it does not slide over as you would expect, rather a spinning wheel is displayed while the next page loads. Joost also did not implement the incremental find that we have all grown accustomed to for searching.

For me, Joost's iPhone app falls just short of greatness. I really like what they are going for here, but I would certainly like to see more content added to Joost's library and support for 3G at the very least, if not EDGE. Even though the videos appear to choke at times, even over Wi-Fi, 3G should be more than capable of streaming video.

I hope that Hulu and Netflix, with their expansive content libraries, are paying attention to what Joost is doing because they are both prime candidates for this sort of mobile application. I get excited just thinking about having access to all of those videos (almost) anytime I want.

When people talk about "economic slowdown," I am pretty sure this is not what they mean: So many buyers flocked to popular online retail sites on Black Friday that many sites slowed to unpleasant levels under the crush.

Keynote Systems said Friday of the 30 sites it tracks, 15 percent had noticeable performance problems. The problems were mostly in the sites' shopping cart and checkout systems, not the catalog functions.

"Every year, we see a handful of Web sites that aren't ready for the holiday rush. The problems are in the shopping cart experience, where you cannot complete a purchase," Shawn White, director of external operations for mobile and Internet testing firm Keynote Systems told me.

I experienced this for myself Friday. Shopping on the HP site (for printer supplies, sadly, not gifts), I found navigating from page to page so slow that I eventually gave up.

According to the Associated Press, Sears.com was offline for two hours Friday. Kohl's and Saks also had problems. Amazon and Target slowed, but not critically.

Although 15 percent of the Keynote-tracked sites had issues this year, last year the number was 30 percent. Wal-Mart, which did poorly last year, has functioned well this season so far. Costco, NewEgg, Best Buy, Dell, and Apple also performed well.

"I'm kind of bullish on online shopping," White said. "We're still seeing people flocking to Web sites, shopping for deals." Online sites are "are having to cut prices even deeper, since brick-and mortar-shops are offering incredible deals to get customers into stores," he said.

Looking on the bright side, perhaps this means that the online retailers' economic stimulus packages (deep discounts) are working, and people are buying things on this first day after Thanksgiving, according to the usual U.S. holiday custom.

That's me with new hair, and glasses using HairTry.

Baldness is serious business--to the tune of millions of dollars every year spent on surgeries, special sprays, and hair pieces. Aderans, the Japanese equivalent of Hair Club for Men has a neat service called HairTry that lets you upload a picture of your head to try on various hairstyles without having to leave your couch.

It takes a 2D photo you've uploaded and processes it for 3D, adding facial gestures and eyeballs that follow your mouse around as you navigate the site. The 3D effect is far more believable than a still image, and even gives you a little back and forth sway that shows off the sides. If you've used Gizmoz or BigStage this is very similar. However outside of those two, and virtual make-up site Taaz (coverage), this is one of the only services I've seen apply the technology to a business.

In addition to hair, the site offers a small selection of eyeglasses, which has been done elsewhere, but is a nice touch considering they've already got your face ready to work with.

The site is entirely in Japanese and runs in Adobe Flash, so you can't use Google Translate on it. In light of that, I've made a quick tutorial of how to upload your head, pick hairstyles, and export it into an amazing image file you can use on your social network of choice:

(via InventorSpot via BuzzFeed)

The Food Network announced Friday that it has launched a new mobile application through its Web site that will offer visitors a listing of seasonal recipes, videos from its hosts, and cooking tips.

Dubbed Food Network Mobile, the company's new mobile application attempts to offer speed and usability for busy supermarket shoppers. The page features three links that allow users to browse all holiday recipes, Alton Brown's recipes, and a slew of videos from the network. A search box above the links allows users to search for specific recipes they can't find elsewhere on the site.

"Being in the store and having access to...recipes that feature your leftover items is an exciting feature of Food Network Mobile," Deanna Brown, president of parent company Scripps Networks Digital, said in a statement. "How many times have you stopped at the store but you don't have the recipe you want to make with you? Now with Food Network Mobile, it's no problem."

Whether users will want to use the Food Network Mobile page is another story. The interface is simple, which makes perusing recipes easy, but the app is clunky and I found it somewhat slow over 3G on my iPhone. On a Windows Mobile device where online apps don't necessarily scale well to the browser, scrolling through recipes and finding the right one may be extremely difficult, rendering the app's search feature practically useless. That said, the site's search feature is quick.

Food Network Mobile is free to access and, according to the company, it will be ad-supported as more people start using the service. Recipes will be updated "constantly" and the focus of the page will change depending on the season. Right now, most of the recipes relate to Thanksgiving Day leftovers.

If you've got several Gmail accounts and are frequently having to juggle signatures for each of them, worth downloading is Blank Canvas' Gmail Signatures. This experimental Firefox extension will drop in one of four custom HTML signatures based on whichever account you're sending the message from. If you're like me and have two or more accounts, setting this up is a big time saver.

Once installed, you get a new drop-down menu that lets you select one of your four custom signatures. These can be managed directly within Gmail, and come with an editor that shows you a live preview of whatever HTML you drop in. Included are four presets with nicknames like personal, business, and family, all of which can be renamed to suit the type of signature you've set up.

It's worth noting you cannot get at your custom signatures on browsers without the extension installed (even if it's the same machine), and this will not change existing Gmail signature settings. This means that any Gmail-specific signature you have will still show up, however, they'll appear underneath the one from the extension.

Gmail Signatures is an experimental add-on, and as such you must be registered with Mozilla's Firefox add-ons site to download it.

Pick out custom HTML signatures for Gmail, and get them to change based on what e-mail address you're sending them from.

EarthCam, a company that allows users to search for Webcam content across the world, announced Wednesday that it will stream Thursday's 82nd Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade in real-time on its site.

Seven EarthCam cameras will be used to capture the event as balloons and floats pass through Times Square. Only one of the cameras will feature audio, but users can switch back and forth between cameras throughout the event to change their viewing angle.

EarthCam's coverage will begin Thursday at 6 a.m. PST and conclude at 9 a.m. PST.

Geezeo, an online financial management service, announced Wednesday that it has expanded its Marketplace to include ratings of online brokerage firms.

According to the company, visitors can now evaluate brokerage firms based on the initial investment required to sign up for an account, associated fees related to stocks, and the overall experience of using the service.

"Geezeo is all about helping our community of users save and make money," Peter Glyman, Geezeo co-founder, said in a statement. "The addition of the Brokerage Marketplace will provide another resource for our users to find the best investment products to help them reach their financial goals."

Geezeo believes its new feature goes beyond providing more information for the user. According to Glyman, user reviews give brokerage firms a glimpse into what people like and dislike from the service and offer them an opportunity to improve. The company will also allow brokers to join in on the discussion.

"Brokers themselves stand to gain from their placement on, and involvement with, Geezeo," Glyman said. "Brokers can join in on discussions with customers in a way that demonstrates their commitment to transparency and quality service."

Users can start adding reviews now on Geezeo's page.

See also: Wesabe, Mint, and Buxfer.

Oh, no! They can't get Twitter SMS updates anymore!

This can't be good. Just a few months after restricting its U.K.-based text-messaging number due to cost issues, Twitter has done the same for Canada.

The microblogging service has cut outbound SMS messages for the folks up north, citing "unexpected changes in our billing." Costs had been doubling for a few months.

Basically, this means Canadian Twitter users will be able to send numbers to its short code, 21212, but not receive them that way. They can instead use the Twitter mobile site or one of many third-party mobile apps to see what their friends are "tweeting," but that requires a mobile data plan. Text messages do not.

"There is a realistic, scalable SMS solution for Canada (and the rest of the world)," a post on Twitter's blog read. "We're working on that and will post more details on the Twitter blog as we make progress."

Twitter, which allegedly rejected a buyout offer from Facebook, has raised a significant amount of venture funding but has yet to produce a business plan.

Highbrow film company The Criterion Collection has launched Criterion.com, an "online cinematheque" for people who want to watch movies, delve into some editorial content, and socialize with other fans.

Perhaps the most notable aspect of the new site is the fact that you can rent many Criterion films (a melange of old and newish, domestic and foreign) for $5 per stream, and that $5 will be deducted if you then choose to purchase the flick on DVD. Kind of a cool model that nobody seems to be using yet.

Criterion has also teamed up with a new film-centric social site, The Auteurs, to host a monthly "film festival" that makes a handful of Criterion films available for temporary free streaming and discussion. November's picks, sponsored by IFC, follow a "cruel stories of youth" theme and feature the World War II drama Au revoir les enfants as well as the quintessential nasty-kids story, Lord of the Flies, among others. No, there's no Mean Girls.

I know, I know, it's all a bit pretentious. Now go put on a scarf and down a few macchiatos and think about something deep.

Amazon has enlisted a half dozen of its most dedicated (addicted?) reviewers to act as holiday gift experts this season. They'll be responsible for providing gift picks, tips, and other advice regarding their favorite products available on the mega-retail site.

Putting a "real people" face on holiday shopping is key for Amazon in a season full of thin wallets and nervous spenders: research firm eMarketer just lowered its projections for online holiday shopping. Many of the tips provided by Amazon's reviewers, for obvious reasons, deal with cost-cutting recession strategies.

Amazon has offered customer reviews since 1995, and says that over 5 million people have submitted reviews so far. Its "Holiday Customer Review Team" members have between 367 and 1,483 reviews under their belt apiece.

The six chosen ones, in case you happen to live next door to any of them or anything, are: Mark Espinosa of Jersey City, N.J.; Debbie Lee Wesselmann of Allentown, Penn.; Marty Hogan of San Francisco; Zack Davisson of Seattle; Joseph Boone of Irvine, Calif.; and Ed Uyeshima of San Francisco.

Wow, way to ignore the "Real America," Amazon! What would Sarah Palin think?

ComScore on Wednesday released its ranking of the top search properties in Japan during the month of September 2008. And although the same two leaders in the U.S. -- Google and Yahoo -- top the list, it's Google that's trailing in Japan.

According to ComScore's qSearch data, 5.9 billion searches were conducted in Japan in September and the average person searched 96 times during the month. Yahoo led the way in search query volume with 3 billion searches and 51 percent market share, but Google wasn't far behind with 2.3 billion searches and 39 percent market share. Microsoft, which makes the third-most popular search engine in the U.S., only mustered 90 million queries during the month to take the fourth spot in the country behind Japan-based Rakuten.

"The search market in Japan is dominated by Yahoo and Google, which combine for more than 90 percent of the market," Maru Sato, managing director of ComScore Japan said in a statement.

Yahoo's control over the Japanese market comes in stark contrast to the U.S. search market, which is dominated by Google. According to ComScore's September data, Google controlled 62.9 percent of the search market, compared to Yahoo's 20.2 percent.

Yahoo has begun offering a new variety of its BOSS (Build Your Own Search Service) called vertical lens technology that lets partners show a subset of search results relating to a particular area.

BOSS lets people repackage, reorder, blend, and otherwise change Yahoo's search results; academics and smaller sites may do so for free, but larger ones must show Yahoo search ads or sign a deal with Yahoo to share revenue. The vertical lens technology lets partners "create a truly comprehensive vertical search engine that complements their core user experience," according to Yahoo.

So far, only some partners can use the vertical lens technology. TechCrunch is one, using the vertical version of BOSS to show technology-related search results. "We're working to share the technology more openly through the BOSS API," or application programming interface, Yahoo said.

Microsoft announced Tuesday that it updated its Live Search Webmaster Center with the ability to detect malware on a publisher's site as well as any outbound links contained on that site. It also announced the launch of a simplified authentication process that makes accessing the company's Webmaster tools much easier.

According to Microsoft's senior director of Live Search, Angus Norton, the company's new malware detection tool will crawl sites for malware. Where there is malware present, it will automatically disable all the links that contain it and alert Webmasters to the issue. A report, which can be downloaded from Microsoft's Webmaster tools page, details which pages are affected and how the site can resolve the issue. Until the malware is removed, Microsoft will flag all the harmful links contained in search results as malware.

Microsoft's new Webmaster tools are active now on the company's page.