This is a follow-up post of my second post in this blog. It look like a new top-level domain, i.e. dot asia is set to begin from this October, according to a news in Singapore. There are certain phases before the dot asia domain will be available for public registration, but the most interesting part is that the first-come, first-served domain registration model is not welcome at this time. For now, I’m concern about the respond of this new domain in Asia, as dot com domain name has became a successful practice whenever a person or an organization in registering the domain of a particular Website. On the domain industry, if success is measured by the popularity, the early winner and the ultimate winner has been the dot com extension.

I just came across the Webmail product of AOL is now fully integrated with AIM, as stated in a press release. This new Web-based email service will allow users to use the email and Instant Messaging services simultaneously from the same application. This is in line with AOL’s vision, i.e. to provide online users with a service that was fundamental to their lives. As I visited the latest news and updates page of AOL, there are bunch of new features that was built-in to this new release, in addition to the launched of the new AIM WIMZI widget.

AOL went public in year 1992, purchased Netscape Communications for about $10 billion in stock in year 1999, started its offering of the Web-based email in 2000, has always remained as one of the most popular email systems among home users.

According to a trusted source in China, a new search engine that called Yodao will be officially launch on July 1st next month. There had been talk in the media of China that this search engine will replace the so.163.com. Indeed, in many ways, 163.com was not considered as a search engine that similarly to Baidu, that owned their proprietary search technology, but was rather a Google’s partner in China that happened to be using Google’s search technology in reaching the Chinese users. However, thing might change now, they launched their new search engine, Yodao could represent a new chapter for them.

On the landing page of Yodao, users can search through the web, image (pictures), blog and dictionary. As I enter the keyword “technology” on their search engine, two lines of explanation appeared. as shown in the above picture:

Meaning: 1. The development of the information technology is the greatest technological advance of the 20th century.

Grammar: 2. Large scale industry emerged only gradually as technology evolved.

I simply don’t understand why they build this “dictionary” services into their search engine. A biased view is that majority of Chinese people that living in China are lack of English proficiency than those that stayed in South-East Asian countries such as Singapore and Malaysia. In the other way, some Chinese living in Malaysia or Singapore that I met, they don’t speak Mandarin.

In addition to this, Yodao has also built-in the text snapshot view whenever you move your mouse cursor to the links of the search results, as illustrated by this page. There is more information, i.e. some demos in this search engine on their “Help” page (in Mandarin).

It was less than two years since the News Corporation took over MySpace and they had decided to take this social networking site on a new path. The introduction of MySpace TV marked as the new focus area that MySpace is putting their internal resources in. Currently, most of the cyberpundits are now discussing the possibilities of this MySpace TV in challenging the leadership position of YouTube. It seems that video-sharing industry on the Web is still rapidly expanding and far from saturation. However, I don’t see this bold action by MySpace will cost them anything. Instead of releasing more advancing features to the MySpace social networking site, MySpace had shifted the company’s strategic focus, did this implied the new direction, its future prospect is even bigger than the existing social networking industry.

MySpace definitely saw the bigger picture of video-sharing industry. According to the co-founder and president of MySpace, Tom Anderson, “When you see us going from 332 million to 648 million videos per month you know something big is happening. We’re going to be rolling out innovative video products and features in the coming months to further empower our users.”

Currently, MySpace TV was launched in two different URL, i.e. MySpaceTV.com or in a subdomain that named as vids.myspace.com due to the fact that users that did not owned MySpace account could still access to this site. I personally feel that if MySpace can make it in the social network, why not a MySpace TV.

There is an interesting article (in Mandarin) about the huge popularity of Baidu Zhidao in China. According to the Chairman of Baidu, Robin Li, Baidu Zhidao has became the most popular online questions and answers platform on the Web. More than 10 million of Chinese speaking users attended to this platform everyday.

Until last June, the statistics released by Baidu showed that Chinese users have answered more than 17 million questions posted on this platform. On the landing page of Baidu Zhidao, the users have answered 17,076,817 questions and there are still 592,102 questions asked by other community users that need to be solved, at the time of my writing. Out of these 17 million questions, 50.7% are categorized under the Knowledge label, with the average 71,308 questions and 223,907 answers created everyday on Baidu Zhidao.

One of Microsoft’s projects, Window Live Folders is now goes limited beta. It is a product that based on the security foundation by means of password-protected. As I read their official blog entry, I’m aware of that it is still in limited beta and they said they will expanding the beta within the next two months. This Windows Live Folders is an online file folder that users are required to sign-up with their Windows Live ID, and 500MB file size is the maximum limit of each folder.

In fact, there were plenty of similar applications launched in the past few years and I failed to recall the names of those. Satirically, sometimes a particular product or service may be sound but too many similar players in the marketplace may also well destroy the chances of its success.

I just came across the blogging software, Blogger had added some new features for their users. Polls page element will let users add their polls to their blogs’ sidebar. The question and the answers can be decided by the blog owner for the voting purpose. The other one is the enclosure links that could turn the Blogger’s blog into a podcast. The up coming next feature will be the video uploading services.

Recognizing that blogging atmosphere is hot now, Google’s engineers are now engaging in developing more features for its blogging software. Would these new features have the influence of making more people to sign-up for the Blogger and use this software? However, I believed most bloggers are more concerned about the control availability, when deciding on a particular blogging engine.

A high-profile video clip finally goes live today on Funny or Die.com. The video clip is called Good Cop, Baby Cop, starring by the founders and McKay’s two-year-old daughter Pearl acting as a baby cop this time. This clip marks Pearl’s farewell performance. The 2 year-old, who rose to stardom following “The Landlord’s” debut on Funny or Die this April, is retiring, reported by Yahoo! News. At the time of writing, The Landlord’s video clip has been viewed by more than 36 million people throughout the world. What’s an achievement! More as it develops, I wonder one day the visitors of Funny or Die.com shall surpass YouTube.

See also my April 2007 post on Funny or Die.com, entitled “Funny or Die.com: No Absurd, No Hope!”

Funny or Die is a new video sharing website that launched in April this year and below is the embedded video clip. Enjoy.