Around the World

» In US: Top 50 advertisers by media value could be found here.

Also, Microsoft’s online advertising revenue reached $623 million during Q2. It represents an increase of $170 million or 38% from the same period in 2006. Total advertising revenue stands at $1.1 billion for the last six months of 2007 and has made its digital ad business a priority (ie–acquiring digital marketing firm aQuantive in August 2007 for $6 billion).

» In Finland: Nokia has acquired Norwegian platform application development provider Trolltech for $153 million. The goal is to allow Nokia “to accelerate its cross-platform software strategy for mobile devices and desktop applications, and develop its Internet services business.” With Trolltech, Nokia and third party developers will be able to develop applications that work in the Internet, across Nokia’s device portfolio and on PCs.

» In Middle East: Google’s Blogger will now be officially available in Arabic, Persian, and Hebrew and supports a right-to-left writing format. The Middle East presents strong growth opportunities for Google and other companies as younger generations embrace the internet, even though bloggers in many Middle Eastern countries blog at their own risk, with sites regularly becoming blocked. In extreme cases, bloggers are even arrested and jailed.

» In China: One of the worst snowstorms to hit since the 1950s has wreaked havoc throughout the country. At least two dozen people died and 827,000 people displaced. The severe conditions are already taking its toll on the Chinese economy. So far the snowstorms have cost $3 billion in damages and have created transportation bottlenecks for travelers as well as for shipments of coal, vital to fueling China’s power plants. Over the weekend, a power outage meant cancelled trains from Beijing to Guangzhou, stranding 600,000 passengers. On Jan. 28, the Shanghai stock exchange plunged 7.2%, hitting a five-month low, on worries about the economic impact of the freeze. Shares did not recover much Jan. 29, rising less than 1%.

» In Japan: NTT DoCoMo, the nation’s #1 wireless operator, has partnered with Google to combine its i-mode mobile Net service with Google’s search technology and other online services. The deal is the second major partnership with a Japanese carrier since Google formally launched its Google Mobile services with KDDI back in July 2006.

» In World: Global digital music sales are up 40%, but overall sales are down 10%. The sale of digital music globally hit $2.9 billion in 2007, up 40% from 2006. But it was still not enough to offset the 10% decline in overall music sales to 17.6 billion. Digital sales now account for 15% of the global market.

Facebook Update

» Facebook has a new JavaScript client library that will allow Facebook apps to be displayed on any website. Since the library does not require any server-side code on your server, you can now create a Facebook application that can be hosted on any web site that serves static HTML.

Newfangled Things

» Redux is part social network and part quiz show. Goal: learn the most about what you’re like and who you’d like. You fill out a profile with all the standard questions (music, age, sex, books) with an optional Myers-Briggs personality test. The heart of the site is training Redux’s algorithm on what people you like. The algorithm isn’t “dumb” or based purely on matching up people based on same answers to questions. It actually learns what properties signify compatibility based on how people use the site and takes special care to match people up with niche interests. Finally, Redux closes the loop by encouraging compatible people to hang out at any of the thousands of public events they’ve pulled from sites like Upcoming.

» The Hype Machine is a great music blog aggregator that continuously collects material, including reviews and songs, from the best music blogs on the net. Comparisons can be drawn to Techmeme, which curates a selection of the best tech news articles from the multitude published each day. The Hype Machine does the same for music, saving indie music aficionados the time it would take to scour the web for the hottest new songs. It also just released its 2007 Music Blog Zeitgeist, a collection of the best songs, albums, and bands of 2007.

» Tweetmeme is like Technorati or TechMeme for Twitter. Basically, it looks for new content and tracks people talking about it. Then it ranks the content based upon who and how much a particular item is being discussed. The number of URLs which spread virally through Twitter each day probably run into the millions, so tracking where that viral trail starts and gains momentum is going to be fascinating.

» In Edinburgh, Hubdub is a startup news forecaster that allows users to track news stories, predict their outcomes and compete with other news junkies. In theory, this predicting process turns you from being a passive news consumer into an active news participant. Currently still in beta.

» WebMynd is a Firefox add-on that records every website you visit and saves a virtual copy on your hard drive. And it doesn’t save just an image of the page or the URL, but the full text site. The idea is that, like Gmail, good search means you don’t have to spend a lot of time bookmarking and tagging websites to find them later (yes!). WebMynd records everything in the background, and a quick search will locate the page. Sounds like my dream come true!

» You Tube has launched a new mobile oriented site that brings video to more handsets, as well a mobile app. M.youtube.com offers mobile optimized content to 3G or WiFi enabled handsets that support RTSP streaming. The mobile page supports logins and channel subscriptions, and is available in country specific form as well. YouTube has also released a beta version of the YouTube for Mobile downloadable application. The app supports the Sony Ericsson k800, w880 and the Nokia e65, n95, n73, 6110 navigator and 6120 classic, providing the same YouTube browsing functionality currently available on the iPhone.