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.

Chrome doesn't have much market share among CNET News visitors, but it's climbing.

Is Google's Chrome browser mainstream?

Certainly not. But I've been curious how widespread its use is, in particular because I'm curious if I have any company in my choice to set Chrome as my default browser.

<!---->

So I persuaded CNET's tech guys to give a window on what's going on here at CNET News. The result surprised me: 3.6 percent of those visiting the site in October used Chrome, up from 1 percent in September, when Google launched Chrome.

That's higher than I expected. It lagged Microsoft Internet Explorer, with 40.7 percent, Firefox with 37.4 percent, and Safari with 18.2 percent, but beat out Opera, with 1.2 percent in October. (Other browsers bring the total to 100 percent.)

Of course, CNET News has a more adventurous and techno-savvy audience than the average Web site. For comparison, I looked at data from Net Applications, which releases browser statistics based on the 160 million different people who visit a network of 40,000 sites using its Web analytics service. The company's data skews somewhat toward usage in North America and Europe, but it's still a more mainstream view of browser use than our site's.

Net Applications gives Chrome's share at 0.74 percent, essentially tied with Opera at 0.75 percent for October. Leading the pack is IE with 71.3 percent, followed by Firefox at 20 percent, and Safari at 6.6 percent.

So it doesn't look like Chrome is crushing either of the major powers. But second-tier browser companies should certainly be paying attention, given how rapidly Chrome ascended to striking distance. Google has a strong brand and a lot of programmers, even though most folks still aren't convinced they need to switch.

Chrome is rarer, with 0.74 percent share, in Net Applications' measurements of millions of browser users.

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KickApps, a company that offers on-demand social networking and widget platforms, announced Tuesday that it raised $14 million in Series C funding. The round was led by North Atlantic Capital, Softbank, Spark Capital, and Prism Ventures.

The funding will be used for expansion into new markets, as well as product development, which the company believes, will help it spur growth in the market.

"KickApps is aggressively extending the scope of services we provide online publishers in a number of important ways," said Alex Blum, KickApps CEO in a statement. "As a next generation website operating system, our mission is to transform a number of traditional services -- video players, editorial presentation, advertising, analytics, marketing, customer relationships -- into highly interactive experiences that are contextually informed by live, actionable data."

KickApps currently powers social services on over 48,000 websites, including Guinness World Records and a New York Knicks Webpage. The company also powered John McCain's social network, McCainSpace, during the 2008 Presidential campaign.

See also: JS-Kit, Ning, and CollectiveX

Someone is using Orkut to spread Trojan links in a message disguised as an official e-mail from the Google-owned social network, according to an alert from security firm Websense released Tuesday.

The message, written in Portuguese to appeal to Orkut's many Brazilian members, looks like it is sent from an Orkut member who is looking for love, Websense says.

"The message contains several links that appear to lead to the official Orkut Web site. Clicking on a link actually leads to a malicious executable file, which is a Trojan Downloader named 'imagem.exe,'" the Websense alert says. "The malicious file opens the legitimate Orkut network log-in page, and in the background downloads a password stealing Trojan named 'msn.exe.'"

The Trojans are hosted on a compromised labor union Web site from southern Brazil, according to Websense.

A Google spokesman said the company was investigating the matter.

It's hard not to pity Yahoo's very public decline, but that doesn't keep us from scratching our heads over the once-great Silicon Valley powerhouse's recent promotion of a plug-in that debuted a year ago and which its developers say is sorely outdated.

An early November post on Yahoo's Messenger blog promoted the Twitter-Sync plug-in, published by New Zealand developers WackyB.

Twitter-Sync on Yahoo Messenger 9.0

Twitter-Sync, last updated on Yahoo's plug-in site over a year ago on September 6, 2007, is curiously said to sync Twitter and Yahoo status updates only with Yahoo Messenger 9.0, which was released a year after the plug-in was created.

The math clearly doesn't add up, but for WackyB, the promotion is an extra slap in the face. "Andy" and "Kathy" from WackyB commented on the post:

It's a shame that Yahoo decided to abruptly end its plugin program for external developers. We created this plugin more than a year ago (published date shows as: Thu, 06 September 2007) when Twitter was in its early days. There have been many improvements to Twitter since then but unfortunately we are unable to update our plugin to reflect this. We have had many requests (more so recently) to make modifications to the plugin but the only way to incorporate changes would be to release as a test plugin (a feature designed to be used only for development). It would have been great if they could have included a means for running local plugins before terminating the plugin system.

A Yahoo representative confirmed in a statement that the Yahoo Messenger developers program shut down in 2007, but affirmed that Yahoo's new Yahoo Open Strategy (YOS) will be available to independent developers "over time."

While YOS promises to be bigger and better than the Messenger developer's program ever was, WackyB's Twitter-syncing app will likely already be obviated by Twitter and Facebook themselves, who will be able to share status message updates via Yahoo's Updates API. Yahoo's Open Strategy will also bring similar ventures to Yahoo products like Yahoo Mail, which will accept updates to people's activity on Yahoo.

Developers have been forced to ignore Yahoo Messenger for over a year.

As for the promotion of the plug-in in light of its developers' annoyance, Yahoo said it highlighted it to bring its attention to users. After trying out the plug-in ourselves, it's easy to see why WackyB wants to update its application. The program works, but in a basic and rather inelegant way by our 2008 standards.

WackyB may be better off going the way of many other independent developers and creating applications for iPhone, Google Android, and Facebook.

Tarpipe is one of the most curious experiments in social media that I've seen lately. It takes personal content (e-mail messages, primarily) as input, and can shunt it to one or more desinations, transforming it in the process. For example, I created a Tarpipe e-mail address that will take a pictures I send it and posts it to Flickr, update Twitter with a link to the Flickr page, and put the picture and the Twitter URL in an Evernote record for me. All I have to do is send the e-mail.

Tarpipe looks a lot like Yahoo Pipes. They work in similar ways: Users drag service and function boxes around on the workspace and connect them with blue tubes to control the flow of data. But Yahoo is about taking inputs from several sources and then creating a universal RSS output. Tarpipe is more about directly updating personal content services like Twitter, Flickr, Friendfeed, Delicious, and Evernote, which Yahoo Pipes doesn't do. The service has the potential to be the answer to the lament I first talked about in The looming crisis: Personal syndication overload.

This workflow takes an e-mailed photo attachment, sends it to Flickr, posts a TinyURL link to it on Twitter, and archives the photo and the Twitter link in my Evernote account.

The app will currently update several personal services: The ones I mentioned, plus a few others like Tumblr, Plurk, and Jaiku. But one problem with the system right now is that, unless you are a programmer, it's inflexible as to inputs. You can e-mail Tarpipe items, and manipulate that data. You can also use an online form for input, but you cannot create complex workflows around form data, other than to direct it to the services you've connected to your account. (The developer interface is apparently quite robust, though.)

Twitterpipe: Coming
One thing end users can't do, at least not yet, is ask Tarpipe to monitor a personal RSS feed (like a Twitter account) and then process that for further transmission to other services. RSS "slurping" is coming, Tarpipe creator Bruno Pedro told me.

Tarpipe keeps a log of all the data it's handled for you.

That's one of the things I'm waiting for. I would like to continue to use the input methods I'm comfortable with (for Twitter, that means Twhirl) and have Tarpipe selectively send my output to other sources based on content (perhaps using hashtags).

The other thing I'm waiting for, which Pedro is working on, is community aggregation. When this is running, you'll be able to monitor and reply to your audience as they comment on your posts. This solves the issue of fractured community for people who contribute their work or thoughts to multiple sources. The concept is this: Tarpipe will track all the items it posts on your behalf. It will monitor those posts at their new homes for replies from other users. It will be able to notify you of those replies so you can participate in discussions that spring up. (Related: MyBlogLog; Typepad Comments.)

The system may also help you connect conversations together that are on different services. For example, if I use Tarpipe to post a photo to Flickr and a link to the photo on Twitter, and then the conversation picks up Twitter, Tarpipe may be able to attach that discussion to the Flickr page.

Pedro told me that Tarpipe may also get features to help its users meld their social networks together on the various services they are signed up for. He calls this the "unified social graph," and says, "You'll be able to follow your social network, invite your contacts to Tarpipe and send messages to specific people."

And finally, he's working on adding new content destinations to Tarpipe, like Facebook, Myspace, Hi5, Picasa, and video sharing services. Richer programmatic access (more APIs) is in the works, too.

An interesting effort
Tarpipe is not done. It's too hard to use, and key parts of its feature set have yet to be built. It is, though, an extremely interesting middleman service for handling what is becoming a real problem for a lot of people: Personal content management not just for what we read, but for what we create.

See also: Ping.fm, Pixelpipe, and Friendfeed.

The Street View's mascot, Pegman, gets some new prominence for using Street View.

Google has given Street View a major new look.

One big change: to activate the Google Maps feature, you drag the "Pegman" character off the top of the zoom slider and drop him where you want to see. It's a lot faster than enabling Street View through a drop-down then clicking where you want to go.

Next, the view itself is larger, filling the whole screen instead of just a window. The higher resolution lets you zoom in more closely. And it works: one trouble spot I use for reference--a dark restaurant sign near my house that I once couldn't read with Street View when trying to give a friend directions--now is visible.

In the lower-right corner of the Street View, there's now a mini-map, and clicking on its upper-left corner zooms the map into a nifty split-screen view with the map below and Street View above.

Well done except for one thing: with either the mini-map or the split screen, the Street View goes black on me when I'm using the latest version of Chrome, 0.4.154.25. (See screenshots below for what it looks like initially and after breaking.) It works fine in Firefox 3.1 beta 1. Is it just me? Comment below if you're seeing problems.

Also, I don't know if this is new, but I just discovered keyboard shortcuts (one of my all-time favorite things). You can pan the view left and right with the A and D keys and tilt up and down with W and S.

For details--and a miniature Pegman gallery that shows various holiday-themed Easter eggs--check Google's Lat-Long blog post from programmer Stephane Lafon and user experience designer Andy Szybalski on Tuesday.

Street View's split screen, when it's working.

Street View's split screen, when it's broken in Chrome.

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Blog search company Technorati announced Tuesday that it has laid off six employees and will cut salaries by 10 percent to 15 percent for the rest of its workforce, which after the layoffs, now number 45.

Responding to what he believes is a worsening economic climate, Technorati CEO Richard Jalichandra said in a blog post that deciding to lay off employees was difficult because of the "high performers who have worked long hours to get us where we are now. They're also friends, and we're very sad to see them go." He claims that Technorati needed to become a "leaner" organization to confront 2009's challenges.

Layoffs aside, Jalichandra reassured readers that Technorati is performing well and its future is bright. The layoffs, Jalichandra claims, are an effort to ensure that Technorati's hope for success becomes more likely.

"In spite of these challenging times, Technorati's prospects haven't changed, and in fact, have never been brighter," Jalichandra said. "In the past year, we've launched several very promising initiatives, and our business has grown significantly. Our overall strategy is not changing, however, the economy has changed dramatically so we're adjusting to meet it."

Technorati wouldn't say who was laid off from the company, but it did say that two of the employees who lost their jobs were executives.

For a listing of other layoffs in the tech sector, check out our Layoff Scorecard.

So earlier today I sent a query out to my Twitter followers: Send me good news. That led to this anti-layoff spreadsheet, the one tracking companies that are hiring. I present it here. The list is alphabetical, with most recent entries shaded. Happy hunting, everyone.

<iframe width="610" height="600" frameborder="0" src="http://spreadsheets.google.com/pub?key=pvAQUc696A97In0oEsHb5Qg&amp;output=html&amp;gid=0&amp;single=true&amp;widget=true"></iframe>

Want to add your open positions to this sheet? Fill out this form. I'd like to see this spreadsheet get bigger than the layoff scorecard.

See also: Crunchboard, Monster.com, Dice.com, etc.

<script> digg_url = 'http://digg.com/tech_news/Tech_Layoffs_The_Scorecard';</script><script src="http://digg.com/api/diggthis.js"></script>

With the overall economy slumping, the tech industry is taking its fair share of hits. We'll keep updating the chart below as news of company changes comes in. See our complete coverage of how the tech sector is faring here: Tracking the tech downturn.

Know of a layoff not listed here? Let us know on this form or e-mail us.

See also: The spreadsheet of sunshine: Who's hiring.

<script type="text/javascript">sortables_init();</script>

If you want a real-time view into the world of layoffs, use this Twitter search. But we recommend having a stiff drink first.

Video-sharing site Ffwd now has links into Twitter.

When you share a video on the site, or even just watch one, the service can optionally blast your activity to your Twitter followers. There's also a new bookmarklet that makes it easy to share any video link on Twitter without actually going to the Ffwd site itself.

I suppose if I find a video I really want to share, on either Ffwd or elsewhere on the Web, it's cool that I can now easily Twitter that out to my followers. And it is interesting to think about how Twitter could become, for some people, an activity stream of what their friends are watching online.

The bookmarklet will create Twitter posts when you want to share a video.

Call me crazy, but I'm not going to have the site send out a Twitter every time I watch a video. (It won't happen on my feed anyway, since I don't hang out on Ffwd.) Mercifully, it appears that Ffwd posts are not quite flooding Twitter yet.

The service reminds me a bit of Twitpic, a picture-posting site I have used. The big difference is that I mostly use Twitpic to post pictures I have taken myself, not those that I discover on the Web (it helps that Twitpic is integrated into Twitter clients Twhirl and Twitterific). If I wanted to send out quick self-shot videos to my followers, I'd look at Ustream, which has Twitter integration, or Seesmic, which has cool video conversation features.

Previously: The dish on the next StumbleUpon: Ffwd.