Kiko, the online calendar I picked as my favorite Ajax application back in September 2005, is now for sale on eBay. The starting bid is $49,999.99, with no takers yet.
While Kiko’s functionality was solid (and improving, especially with recent releases), the team apparently wasn’t able to develop a viable business model to compete with the many other free alternatives (30Boxes, CalendarHub, Airset, and–oh yeah–Google Calendar).
I suggest keeping an eye on company founders Justin Kan and Emmet Shear–they’ve no doubt learned lessons here and will go on to bigger and better projects…
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CNet has an interesting gallery of doctored photos–worth a look, especially given the recent Reuters brouhaha (via Buzzmachine).
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August 15th, 2006 · Blogging
In my last post, I described a new service that tracks what other sites are popular with my readers. I didn’t fully realize it at the time, but one such site is the brand new blog of Mahmood Ahmadinejad, the President of Iran. It’s worth a look (but see the update below first)–in the upper right hand corner, you’ll find a series of flags. Clicking on the second from the left will translate the site into English from Persian (thanks, AfghanMania).
The site also has a “question of the day” feature. Today’s question is: “Do you think that the US and Israeli intention and goal by attacking Lebanon is pulling the trigger for another word war?” Currently, 71,844, or 55% of all replies say yes. 58,919, or 45%, say no.
Frightening.
More on Ahmadinejad here and here.
Update: apparently Ahmadinejad’s blog contains a trojan horse intended to attack visitors with Israel-based IP address who use Windows and Internet Explorer.
Update 2 (8/16/06): the latest word is that Ahmadinejad’s blog does not contain a trojan. For more, including technical details on what caused the initial alarm, see here (thanks, Steve).
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Looks like Interactive just bought a 51% stake in NYC-based ConnectedVentures, which runs CollegeHumor.com, among other sites (link to more deal info). Gawker reported last month that this was in the works, valuing the company somewhere between $20-30M. According to CollegeHumor’s media kit, the company displays ~280 million pages each month and has ~240,000 email subscribers.
At the same time, rumors are still circulating that Viacom will buy The Onion. The NY Post puts the price tag for this deal at only ~$10M (link).
While these are small deals, I think the moves make good sense: there’s real value in brands. In particular, both CollegeHumor and The Onion have fanatically loyal readers in a premium (ie young) demographic.
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