3 months after the team at Pownce announced there was an API coming, it decides to arrive.

The Kevin Rose/ Leah Culver Twitter meets file sharing network Pownce has finally launched a public API, 3 months after first announcing that an API was coming.

Pownce launched in late June to a surge of interest based around the involvment of the ever-popular Kevin Rose (Digg, Revision3), however the popularity has not lasted. Both Compete and Alexa show big drops in traffic from Pownce as users have abandoned the platform, Alexa showing a remarkable 80% drop in traffic. The Pownce AIR client was buggy at launch and the lack of an open API has meant that whilst Twitter continues to grow with the assistance of an ever increasing range of third party apps, Pownce has actually gone backwards.

After this drop Leah will be hoping the API will bring back some of the traffic they have lost in the 3 months since the announced the API.

Source: TechCrunch

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Google has launched an invite-only beta test program for their new AdWords extension for TV advertising. Google TV Ads has started with some high profile customers (sill a secret). But it will be big websites that will be invited.

Have a look at how it works!

Google is putting its chocolate into Nielsen Media Research’s peanut butter. The two companies have signed a pact to cooperate on measuring the effectiveness of TV advertising. Currently, companies can buy Google TV Ads only on the Dish satellite network.

Google is bringing second-by-second analytics and feedback to the TV advertising world, but all it can do right now is measure what’s happening inside the set-top box. The deal with Nielsen will allow Google to add a crucial layer of demographic data. The combination of Google’s second-by-second reporting of which ads are being watched with Nielsen’s panel-based demographics should prove delicious to advertisers. Now all Google has to do is gain a foothold in other cable and satellite TV networks besides Dish.

I wonder how it will go. I can certainly see it becoming big amound larger websites but definitely not medium sized blogs like TechJuicer!

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Live Labs is certainly doing some amazing work pushing the boundaries of web technologies and inventing new ones!

So what is Listas?

Well to be honest, at first glance this doesn’t really push any boundaries. I guess I can fit what Listas is, into one sentence. “Collaberating lists”. That about sums it up.

You create, share, edit and collaborate lists! These lists could be anything:

1. Guests for the party
2. Grocery items
3. Wish lists

That’t it. You can share your lists with anyone you like. Just rememeber that it is a Tech Preview so basically in beta. Let me know how you get on!

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As part of a settlement with New York State Attorney General Andrew Cuomo, social networking site Facebook has agreed to implement new protections on its service to better respond to complains of abuse, harassment, or inappropriate content, and will also open its operations to independent compliance examiner for the next two years.

Under the new terms, Facebook will response to any complaint about online harassment and abuse, or the presence of nudity or pornography on the site within 24 hours: Facebook users just need to contact abuse@facebook.com. Facebook has also agreed to have its compliance monitored by an Independent Safety and Security Examiner (ISSE), who will be approved by the New York Attorney General.

The settlement agreement comes a month after New York Attorney General Andrew Cuomo subpoenaed documents from the social networking site as it investigated allegations of obscene content on the site and charges sex predators were using the service as a hunting ground. Facebook has consistently claimed it social networking service is safe for minors, but the New York AG found that, when posing as underage users on the site, its investigators were repeatedly solicited by adult sexual predators and could easily locate and access pornographic content.

In a statement, Facebook’s chief privacy office Chris Kelly said that privacy has always been a “core tenet” of the service, and the company plans to develop new mechanisms to enhance the online safety of its users that go beyond the terms of the agreement with the New York AG.

Source: Digital Friends

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Now I will first admit to not using MapQuest at all. I was put off by the lack of AJAX and pannable mapping. This was the same for MultiMap in the UK.

So I went to Google Maps along with my own creation! www.dorsetexplorer.com. Beware DorsetExplorer is in beta and only works with IE for now!

Anyway back to MapQuest. They have finally caught up with the functionality that has been lacking for so long. We now have a very Google-like service. Even though MapQuest already has the largest market share. I will assume that this is only visits to the site asn the Google Maps API would, I think, put Google at number 1.

This new beta of MapQuest is still pretty basic. You can see the map and driving directions in different panes on the same page, and can also create routes for multiple cities (I know we already have it in Google). Or, you can collapse the directions pane so that the map covers the entire page. The search and navigation has been simplified to a one-box approach. You can save maps and routes, and share them with people. And you can print out the exact map image easily at the zoom level you want.  You can read more details here on the new MapQuest Beta blog.

Over the next few months, though, expect to see new features rolled out at a rapid clip, about every two weeks You will soon be able to drag the location pins around to read what’s underneath (they will remain connected to the spot they are marking by a thin line). The maps will become embeddable in other sites. Live traffic updates will be added. And people will be able to annotate the maps. Again, many of these features are already available on Google Maps or Yahoo Maps.

I would prefer them to be pushing the boundaries rather than trying to play catchup. It seems they have slipped into the Microsoft frame of mind, they have a very popular system but only improve it to match other products and not push themselves to be better.

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If you have wanted a really high resolution photo from google images you have to make your way through every photos larger than 1024×768 (ish) pixels. Well now Google have added an “Extra Large” option on their Images Search Engine.

The actual calculation they iuse to define a image as “Extra Large” is still not know but but it could be around 2,000,000 pixels, so you’ll find images that have sizes like: 6016 x 416, 1024 x 2202, 1100 x 3700.

Thanks Google I have wanted this option for ages.

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