Written By Reprise Media | June 15, 2006 | Share This |

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It’s no illusion; we really do have the lowdown on these stories:

AOL to launch [extremely popular app]-killer …But will we remember a month from now? To jog your memory, AOL came out with a social networking site in early May, called AIM Pages. They followed that up the next week with a clip sharing site, UnCut Video. Now we’re not saying we’re about to call out the National Guard to go looking for them, but the much-hyped releases don’t seem to have their intended targets (MySpace and YouTube) shaking in their boots.

Maybe third time’s a charm; AOL’s Netscape portal has been relaunched (in Beta) as a Digg-style community-tagged news site. According to Michael Arrington, a Digg-esque voting system allows users to help drive popular stories to more prominent positions on the Netscape front page. Unlike Digg, however, a staff of full- and part- time editors will hand pick some featured stories. Arrington thinks Netscape’s impressive page view totals will help give it a boost. Danny Sullivan calls it a “brave attempt” with several flaws, while ValleyWag is, uh, less charitable. One thing’s for sure: this is the most buzz Netscape’s gotten since we were using it to web surf in 1996.

Looking for Love City? Exit on Yahoo! Parkway Barry Schwartz points out a Denver Post story that says Yahoo!’s getting sued for trademark infringement…in Google AdWords. JP Enterprises, which owns dating site lovecity.com, isn’t happy with Yahoo!, saying the company’s been bidding on the terms “www.lovecity” and “lovecity.com” to advertise its own Yahoo! Personals in Google’s search results. Kind of an interesting turn for Yahoo! if the allegations prove true, considering that they frown on such behavior on the part of their own search advertisers.

“Eat McDonal-” If you find your mind wandering during thirty-second radio spots, you’re the problem ClearChannel wants to fix. Ad Age reports that the radio network is discussing the possibility of introducing one second ads with its sponsors. Called “blinks,” the tiny spots might be wedged in between songs (much like station IDs) or used to kick off news segments. What, exactly, would be in a one second ad? Suggested examples included an abbreviated McDonald’s jingle or the NBC chimes. So far, interest on the part of advertisers appears…small (via Threadwatch).

And now, feats of daring-do Apple’s new flagship Manhattan store is open 24 hours a day, so it stands to reason that it wouldn’t take long until someone tried to use it for an endurance-based publicity stunt. Applexnet says that an online erotica mag has recruited one of its members to spend a week inside the store without leaving its iconic glass cube. If she has trouble finding ways to make the time pass, she could always kill an hour by getting stuck in the elevator (thanks, Digg).

Topics: Technology |