Macworld has the entire list of 31 different movies and TV shows that were featured during the commercial. Also check out Macworld for the song featured during the commercial.

The iPhone ad aired during the Oscar ceremony’s first commercial break after the awards for art direction and scientific and technical achievements were presented.

The iPhone ad has also been posted on Apple’s Web site.

If you feel the need to send and share large files over the Internet, then senduit is a very good option for you.

Using SenduIT, you can upload upto 100MB of data. When you upload your file, senduit creates a unique URL for you which you can then share and distribute to people. The thing to keep a note of is the time limit after which the file is deleted from Senduit servers. If you have some sensitive information to share, you can keep a limit of 30 minutes or go all the way upto a maximum of 1 week. So, once you upload your file to SenduIT, you are given a URL using which you can access your file. When you share this URL, a click on the URL and you can start downloading the file immediately.

Other advantages is the extremely clean and simple interface and that you don’t need to register to use this service. A simple upload, set time limit and you are all set. The downside is that there is a restriction of 100MB in file size and you can’t use this to host your files forever with the max time limit being 1 week.

Overall, a very useful and non complicated service allowing people to share large files with, download it on their own terms without interrupting their routines.

According to Business 2.0, Google has already been testing such services in more than 10 countries including Germany and Japan.  According to Deep Nishar, Google’s director of product management, ” The cell phone is becomming more of a utility device. This means consumers will be more focused on services”

Among the major players providing such a free cell phone service is Virgin Mobile’s SugarMama. SugarMama’s motto: Give us a minute of your time, get a minute of airtime. Virgin Mobile’s existing customers can sign up for SugarMama through Virgin Mobile’s website by filling out a short demographic profile and certifying that they are 13 years and older. That’s the deal and you have three ways to earn with your SugarMama. You can watch short online video commercials on a computer and give them your feedback . You can also earn airtime by opting in to SMS messages with advertisements, discounts and other promotions and answer questions via text message and finally through surveys about brands, products and services.

According to Dan Schulman, Chief Executive Officer at Virgin Mobile USA,

“This is truly a win-win situation for everyone involved.Through this multi-faceted service, Virgin Mobile customers will earn free minutes as well as exclusive access to unique content and offers. Our partner brands will be able to enrich the lives of Virgin Mobile users while customizing how they engage with our base — all while adding a smart and targeted mobile channel to their media mix.”

So, How many minutes can you earn though this SugarMama service. According to Virgin, it all depends on you, how much you want to get involved. The more services you sign up for, the more you earn. Fine print: Upto 75 minutes each month. However, this new creative method of targetting the youth market has caught on with a number of powerful companies willing to advertise which include Microsoft’s Xbox, Pepsi and a youth antismoking campaign called Truth.

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The Language pack includes Chinese, Danish, Dutch, Finnish, French, German, Italian, Japanese, Korean, Norwegian, Portuguese, Russian, Spanish and Swedish language packs. All in all, 15 Language packs.

Other notable updates released today if you are a developer is the Visual Studio 2005 Service Pack 1

A Unique Business Model

Amie Steet allows you to discover new songs and new artists without a big dent in your wallet. At Amie Street, artists upload tracks onto the site. The price for each song starts at zero. Yes, each and every song offered as a FREE download when uploaded onto the site. Artists upload their music directly to the site in mp3 format at whatever quality bitrate they choose. Based on an initial observation, most of the tracks seem to have the 128kbps bitrate.

Amie Street uses an algorithm to determine song prices based on demand where the price of a song rises according to increased demand for the song. So the more a song is downloaded, the more its price will rise. At the same time, the maximum price any song will rise to is US 99c which is a good bet to be the most popular song available.  I did a quick check at prices and did not see anything higher than $0.70 at this point of time(Spinlight City from Miami). This community based pricing model according to Joshua Boltuch, keeps songs affordable, more organized and easier to find, while also being a seamless promotional tool for musicians who enjoy the snowball or bandwagon effect.

They are also trying to get more publicity by integrating a social network element into a business model where they drive each other. Users are able to create a profile, make friends and provide recommendations to them. You can tag an artist with relevant terms, send the artist a message, post to a message board, email the songs to friends and also promote the group by embedding a song on your MySpace page. You can also embed a Meebo window for IM chat right on the user page.

Amie St also actively solicits bands of all genre and continue to keep adding music to the site. Currently, Amie Street has a Catalogue of over 1000+ artists and a database of more than 10,000 songs.

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PodZinger

How does PodZinger work?

Podzinger creates an index of audio and video files in their database and using their “advanced” speech recognition technology and natural language processing, create an index of their content. Google, in this picture and text based ads, classifies its content using Metadata, such as the headline and introduction describing the audio file’s general content. PodZinger, using their speech recognition technology, searches words within both audio and video, not just using the metadata to classify content based on topic and usage.

As the name of the company suggests, PodZinger was created originally to target the Podcasts segment.Podcasts are difficult to search through their content because of the complexity of finding text within an audio stream. Most podcast search sites provide directories of podcasts by subject, category or search only by the metadata provided by the creator of the podcast. PodZinger takes search a step further by searching the spoken words inside the podcast in order to find more specific and relevant results.

As shown in the picture below, each search result also includes excerpts of each search result and also shows the time and context of every occurance of the search keyword. You can also jump to the time showing the keyword you searched for in the video or audio content.

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According to Google vice-president Salar Kamangar

” Google Video will become even more comprehensive as it evolves into a service where you can search for the world’s online video content, irrespective of where it may be hosted” .
“YouTube, meanwhile, excels at being a leading content destination with a dynamic community of users who create, watch and share videos worldwide”.
“YouTube, we’ve stated previously, will remain an independent subsidiary of Google, and will continue to operate separately”.

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Now, most of us belong to more than one of these social network and as Nick Gonzalez at TechCruch points out, keeping track of your own networks, and those of your friends, is complicated.

How does UpScoop do all this? Upscoop figures out the networks of your friends based on their email address which is imported from your email (AOL, Gmail, Hotmail, Yahoo) account. Upscoop, using your contact list, searches a number of social networks and tries to find the profile pages of your friends based on their indexed database. Once the results are displayed, you can see which social networks your friends use and then you can either add your friends to your existing social network or join the sites they use.

Downsides:
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Additionally, if the source has more pictures with the same tag, Google Image Search allows you to select and choose “more results from” feature as shown in the picture below.

Another subtle addition is that of the definition for the search keyword. The defintions are provided by answers.com. Now, I am not sure if this feature is a new addition or I never noticed it before.

I personally am not a big fan of the change as earlier, while I still had the option of distilling image sizes by large images, medium images or small images, I could with a quick glance select the image with the dimensions I am looking for. Now, I need to do a mouse over to check their dimensions. Also, most people prefer going to reputed sites over unknown ones when selecting an image. With the domain name now hidden, this is a tedious chore.

For most of the people running the OneCare beta, their service will expire latest by March 2007 or much sooner depending on when you installed the beta. According to Microsoft, after your service expires, you won’t receive new virus and spyware definitions or other OneCare updates and that to continue utilizing their “OneCare protection”, you will have to uninstall OneCare and then reinstall the released version of the product.

As for the Beta Testers, Microsoft seems to be in a generous mood and offering their supposedly limited time Introductory offer for Beta Users

To show our appreciation for our beta participants, we are offering you the full, released version of Windows Live OneCare at a price of 19.95 for one year. This offer is over 60% off the full retail price and covers up to 3 Windows XP or Windows Vista PCs. The offer will expire February 12, 2006, so be sure to take advantage of it soon.

To take advantage of this offer:
1) Uninstall Windows Live OneCare beta (by using the standard Add / Remove Programs Control Panel on your computer). Be sure to restart your computer when the uninstallation is complete.

2) When your computer restarts, return to this e-mail and click this link:

Special offer for Beta participants

(You must use the link in this email in order to be eligible for this special introductory pricing.)

Follow the instructions to redeem your offer and install the fully released version of the service.

Thanks again for all your support,
Windows Live OneCare Beta Team

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