MashLogic is a new Firefox plugin that allows you to specify what kind of links and other information you’d like to see on webpages.

You can specify, for example, links to Wikipedia, the names of your favorite players and teams on your favorite sports blog, as well as links to related headlines. The plugin also lets you stream audio and video from any wepage.

Currently available by invitation, you can specify your interest here: http://www.mashlogic.com

Source: Michael Arrington, “MashLogic: Take Back The Web (By Getting Awesome Links)”, TechCrunch, October 12, 2008

In 2000 it was the dot-com crash. Right now it’s the death of Web 2.0.

According to Michael Arrington, writing in TechCrunch, the recent crisis on financial markets has ended not just easy credit, but more importantly for many startups, easy capital.

Just as occurred following the dot-com crash, it seems that venture capital firms will have less capital to invest in startups, be much more choosy about which companies they do invest in, and will be more actively involved in how the capital they have invested in startups is used.

With less money available, Michael Arrington predicts startups will start laying off people, with the ‘bulging marketing and communications departments’ the first to go.

Apparently that’s not such a bad thing since these are not only ‘the very people who make Silicon Valley such a nasty place to be in the boom times’, but as ‘the number of startups dwindle, it won’t be so hard for them to get attention from press and users, so those marketing and PR flaks won’t be missed all that much.’

Of course, it’s my view that tough times call for more marketing and selling - and less techie perfectionism – so I’m not sure that slashing and burning in the marketing department is the best idea.

Then again, we’re talking about people who equate ‘marketing’ with fluffy, irrelevant, non-direct response advertising and PR. Hardly real marketing, is it?

Meanwhile, this quote from Michael Arrington is priceless:

“We’ll look back in later years and think of this most recent boom as the Web 2.0 period, when we were wowed by the magic of user generated content, copyright violations on a massive scale, and neat little widgety things that used Javascript and Flash to turn web pages into pretty close equivalents to the old desktop apps. Of course there were other evolutions as well. Advertising technology has advanced steadily, particularly in tailoring ads to an individuals needs, and tracking them properly. This is the period that social networking as we think of it today was born, and we’ll never be rid of it in our lifetimes.”

Dot-com. Web 2.0. Boom. Bust. At the end of the day, no business survives without… marketing.

Source: Michael Arrington, “An Ignoble But Much Needed End To Web 2.0, Marked By A Party In Cyprus”, TechCrunch, October 10, 2008

Google and Yahoo are apparently negotiating with the Justice Department to remove its objections to the two companies’ controversial search advertising deal.

As originally planned, the deal would essentially see Google serve up ads for Yahoo search results. Many – from advertisers and publishers to politicians – have expressed concerns that the upshot will be less competition and higher ad prices.

The Justice Department is evidently looking at capping the volume of Google ads Yahoo could show, imposing price constraints to prevent price hikes, and other initiatives to allow a deal to go ahead that would preserve competition.

Source: Michael Arrington, “Will A Volume Cap Make The Yahoo/Google Deal Work?” TechCrunch, October 14, 2008

Ex-Yahooer and Delicious founder Joshua Schachter has created a GreaseMonkey script and Firefox plugin that displays the political leanings of blogs and news sites on Memeorandum, a news aggregator.

Based on linking behavior, sites that are shaded blue are supposedly Democrat oriented, while sites shaded red are Republican oriented. Presumably, sites with no shading are either neutral or sites for which not enough information is known.

I’ve just gotta try this out…

Source: Michael Arrington, “Delicious, Upcoming Founders To Show You Political Bias Of News Sites”, TechCrunch, October 10, 2008

Monster Venture Partners has acquired a controlling interest in Bitwine. Launched in late 2006, Bitwine is a service that enables people to ask experts questions in return for a fee.

Bitwine users can ask questions related to all kinds of things ranging from nutrition to computers via Skype, other VoIP services or normal phone lines. Experts can charge their clients a flat fee or by the minute. Clients pay by PayPal and the money is sent as soon as the expert has answered the relevant question. Interestingly, the service is also available as a white label product.

Nice idea, Bitwine. And it seems Monster Venture Partners agrees, especially given potential synergies with its other portfolio companies, including Questions.com, Careers.org, Patents.com, Traveler.com and Slideshow.com.

Source: Michael Arrington, “Bitwine Acquired By Monster Venture Partners”, TechCrunch, October 5, 2008

Alert Thingy has announced the upcoming release of version 2 of its AIR desktop application.

The current version of the service provides alerts for such social sites as Twitter, Flickr and Friendfeed. Alert Thingy Version 2, which will be released this month, adds support for Digg, YouTube, Facebook, Jaiku, Pownce and Tumblr.

Source: Michael Arrington, “Alert Thingy Looks To Be All-In-One Social Desktop Tool”, TechCrunch, October 6, 2008, Alert Thingy

eBay has announced it will lay off 10% of its workforce - around 1,000 staff plus several hundred temporary positions.

Meanwhile, the company has also made two acquisitions: Denmark’s classifieds site, DBA.dk, for $380 million, and Bill Me Later for $820 million in cash and around $125 million in outstanding options.

Source: Michael Arrington, “Ebay Spends More Than $1.2 Billion To Buy Bill Me Later And DBA.dk, And Lays Off 10% Of Employees”, TechCrunch, October 6, 2008

TechCrunch reports that Toronto based b5Media plans to change how it pays the bloggers in its blog network. For many, the changes will mean considerable pay cuts.

Based on an email memo issued by chief executive Jeremy Wright, b5media - which consists of hundreds of blogs - plans to ditch the previous pay structure under which bloggers were paid a guaranteed $100-$200 per month plus bonuses for traffic.

Now, bloggers will receive smaller guaranteed payments plus monthly bonuses for: press coverage received by the blog or blogger; exclusive interviews they organize; and the growth of the blog. There will also be a quarterly bonus based on a scoring system.

The upshot will be that bloggers will be paid less, in many cases MUCH less, than previously. Mr Wright, however, stresses that this is due to a previous system that over-paid bloggers and the need to better align payments with performance.

Source: Michael Arrington, “Big Blogger Pay Cuts At b5Media”, TechCrunch, October 2, 2008

It’s no surprise that I often quote TechCrunch in this newsletter - it’s one of my favorite tech/business blogs.

Well, congratulations are due: TechCrunch has reached over 1 million average daily readers to its RSS feed.

TechCrunch founder Michael Arrington points out that it’s taken just under 39 months (a little over 3 years) to achieve this milestone. That’s an awesome achievement.

Well done TechCrunch.

Source: Michael Arrington, “1 Million RSS Readers: Thank You, TechCrunch Readers”, TechCrunch, September 13, 2008

It’s been a bit over a week since Google launched its Chrome web browser and, according to NetApplications, it’s already snared 1-2 percent of the global browser market. Clicky says Chrome is being used by 2-3% of visitors to the 45,000 sites it tracks.

Looking at our own website statistics, 2.5 percent of visitors to our Kikabink website are now using Chrome, while 43.38 percent use Internet Explorer, 47.18 percent use Firefox and 5.25 percent use Safari.

Source: Richard MacManus, “RWW Predictions: Browser Wars 2.0″, Read Write Web, September 8, 2008, Michael Arrington, “Google Analytics Now Tracks Chrome. Our Share: 6.23%”, TechCrunch, September 4, 2008