If you got a blog or don’t…who cares you can still make a pot of money! Yes, you heard it right, a new service Feedpass.com allows you to make money or rather “share money” right off someone else’s hard work…and why not we ask after all you take the time and effort to read it and tell others about it!

This is what Alec Saunders wrote about this…
“…I started thinking about the whole FeedPass abuse theme I wondered about yesterday. And then it clicked how easy it would be to cut the author of a blog out of the revenue stream on FeedPass. Here’s what I did:

1. I used my Feedburner account to create a new feed for TechCrunch. Here’s the chicklet. 2. I used Feedpass to wrap that feed in advertising. You can see it here.
3. Then, I used FeedBurner’s Title/Description Burner feature to insert the FeedPass claim code. FeedPass accepted the modified header as real, and allowed me to claim TechCrunch.

By doing this, I get the 1/3 of Google revenues that FeedPass reserves for the creator of the feed, PLUS the 1/3 that FeedPass reserves for the owner of the feed. Sorry Mike. I guess I cut you out of the loop…”

It is interesting to note that FeedPass was informed about this possibility by Saunders, which they promptly acted upon by disabling the FeedBurner link and removed any advertising until they figured out how to resolve the issue. Shouldn’t they have figured out this problem first? Well apparently they did…and guess what? They re-enabled all the features. The reason—Others do it as well!

Read more of this nonsense on socialsoftware blog and mashable.com.

Looks like the “Web Office” space is really heating up! Application developers are teaming up with each other to enhance their individual experiences and expand the market.

Jotspot recently announced it is partnering with salesforce.com to integrate its complete range of collaborative products into the salesforce.com AppExchange. This news comes in line with Salesforce in their going pursuit to ramp up its AppExchange program.

For more on this, check out Richard MacManus’s chat with Joe Kraus, co-founder and CEO of JotSpot, on ZDNet.

To see the app in action check out the Video Demo here.

By MICHAEL ASTOR
Associated Press Writer

RIO DE JANEIRO, Brazil (AP) -- Google Inc. said Wednesday that it has agreed to shut down some communities on its popular Orkut social networking site because the Brazilian government says they advocate violence and human rights violations.

Google agreed to shut down any sites that violate Orkut's terms of service, which forbid "any illegal or unauthorized purpose," after the company met Tuesday with a Brazilian human rights commission, which presented evidence that Brazilians have been using the invitation-only networking site to promote crimes and violence.

Orkut is extremely popular in Brazil with some 8 million users, representing about a quarter of all Brazilians who have access to the Internet.

In recent years, news reports have linked drug dealing operations and organized fights between soccer fans to Orkut communities. One community allegedly advocated killing the president and planting a bomb in Congress.
 
 

"Orkut does not condone any of the communities that advocate violence and are a threat to human rights," Nicole Wong, a Google attorney, said in a statement.

Brazilian Rep. Luiz Eduardo Greenhalgh, a member of the congressional commission, said Google had agreed to remove six Web sites from Orkut and help police identify those who posted the pages as part of a preliminary accord.

"I am satisfied with progress of the agreement, but we only expect to reach a final agreement in 15 days," Greenhalgh said by telephone from Brasilia, the nation's capital.

He said in principle the agreement would require Google to hold user information for up to six months to provide time for Brazilian courts to issue subpoenas, if necessary.

Google would also be required to set up a Portuguese speaking team that was aware of Brazilian legislation to monitor the online community.

Google, however, did not confirm whether or not it would be handing over user data to the Brazilian government, and said it was still waiting Wednesday for Greenhalgh to provide a list of the questionable sites.

Greenhalgh said the list was sent by overnight mail and should arrive Thursday morning.

Determined to maintain the consumer loyalty that has helped fuel its success, Google has repeatedly stressed its commitment to protect its users' information within the bounds of local laws.

Earlier this year, Google fought a U.S. Justice Department subpoena seeking an extensive list of the search requests that people had been entering into its search engine.

Google argued the demands were an unnecessary intrusion that threatened to undermine the public's trust in the Internet, and a U.S. federal judge agreed. Although it didn't have to disclose search requests, Google was ordered to provide the government with the addresses of 50,000 Web sites in its search index.

When Google launched a search engine in China earlier this year, the company decided not to offer its e-mail service, to lessen the likelihood of facing a government subpoena seeking access to private messages.

Rival Yahoo Inc. has come under intense criticism for providing the Chinese government with personal e-mails that have contributed to the convictions of several journalists.

Microsoft has announced the third release of Windows Live Local, which is an online local search and mapping service that gives users the ability to quickly find maps, directions and local search information that is layered on top of rich, immersive aerial photography.

Added functionality includes real-time traffic flow and incident reporting, new social networking tools that enable users to save and share their favorite local experiences, and productivity enhancements from extending the Windows Live Local experience into Microsoft Office Outlook and Windows Live Messenger. The service is also expanding its beta release to the U.K. and a limited version to Canada.

To know more, click here.

THE ASSOCIATED PRESS

A new Web site is trying a different twist on digital music sales by selling songs that consumers can purchase stripped of musical parts such as drums, keyboards, guitar or bass guitar.

DreamMusician.com hopes to entice musicians who want to play along to hits by artists like Smash Mouth, Tears for Fears, Rick James and others while pretending they're actually filling in on a given part.

The site, which launched earlier this month, sells song downloads for about $2 each and compilations of the same song with different instrumental parts removed starting at about $18. The tracks are downloaded in the Windows Media Audio format.

Universal Music Group said Wednesday it licensed instrumental tracks from the original masters of approximately 50 songs to the Web retailer. Among the UMG artists whose works are available on the site are Marvin Gaye, Jackson 5 and Elton John.

The Web site says it expects to offer more than 1,000 songs, or 10,000 tracks, by the end of the year.

Richard MacManus on ZDNet talks about IE’s inadequacy as a web 2.0 platform to perform complex tasks. Richard is a freelance web analyst and writer based in Wellington, New Zealand, he runs Read/Write Web.

He speaks about the problem with regards to Zimbra, an open source collaboration suite, pointed out to him by his readers. The readers reported that the application was great but wasn’t responsive enough in IE.

In response to this, Satish Dharmaraj, CEO of Zimbra, responds saying that “Zimbra performs significantly better in Firefox, primarily because of the DOM performance”. He noted that Zimbra is “more of a DOM manipulator than Gmail is - and because IE lacks decent DOM manipulation techniques, that's where they've had issues.”

Furthermore Satish said, “Gmail is a very light app and has a lot of HTML in it”. Zimbra on the other hand doesn't have as much HTML as Gmail, which ultimately hurts them in IE. Microsoft’s latest iteration of the default Windows browser--IE7 will address these issues.

Ross Dargahi's blog (Zimbra staff member) has more on this…
“IE 6 is an inadequate platform for developing advanced Web 2.0 applications. I suspect that a number of hard core web application developers will nod their heads in agreement with this statement. From my experience, IE 6 is certainly more challenging to work with than some of its competitors, and it exhibits some very unpleasant behaviours that make it a difficult platform with which to develop advanced Web 2.0 applications.”

“From a Web 2.0 application developers perspective (developers who use a lot of JavaScript and DOM manipulaion), IE 6 is plagued by a number of well known problems such as its ability to readily leak memory.”

“Interestingly Ross sees this as a chance for Firefox to grab market share from Microsoft, because “Firefox’s superiority as a Web 2.0 platform” stands it in good stead as Ajax apps become “more ubiquitous and increasingly feature rich over time”, writes Richard.

So does Firefox Rule? Definitely for now, but Microsoft isn’t too far behind!

About.com recently introduced the Brightcove streaming video player into its site. This move by the popular website will give it some depth in its offerings as well as provide advertisers with interactive advertising options.

According to an Adotas report, the website expects to produce at least 500 original video clips by the end of the year within its style, home & garden, gadgets, and health channels. A majority of these will continue in the vein of the site’s established content formula: advice and how-to guides hosted by leading experts of niche fields. About.com does plan to bring in a number of new personalities with experience in TV broadcasting.

To visit the new section on About, click here.

We spotted exclusive screenshots of Ookles on Web2.0central.com. Web2.0central chatted up with Scott Johnson of Ookles, and they managed to get some great screenshots of this upcoming project.

Ookles, is a photo-sharing service or perhaps more as the screenshots indicate…it’s got “photos, videos, podcasts” all under one roof. Most of the applications out there in the “web 2.0 land” offer only one or two solutions; Ookles seems to have a much more holistic approach. Check out the screenshots here, here and here.

Scott Johnson has been a long time entrepreneur in technology who started his first business in 1987 and sold it. He started Feedster and is currently involved with Ookles.

According to Techcrunch, Bebo, an online social networking website, acquired a very healthy $15 million round of financing, led by Benchmark Capital. This round of financing will help Bebo to initiate and implement a number of changes and upgrades to the website, so that its users would benefit immensely.

According to the report, “Bebo is focusing on non-U.S. growth, particularly the UK. That makes a lot of sense. The U.S. market is completely saturated between Myspace and Facebook.”

Niall Kennedy reports that Yahoo! is planning on launching a new video site that would include videos from around the web and a few from Yahoo! users as well. Users would be able to author and upload their own video files or maybe add some special effects.

The new site, reported Niall, would support supports personal favorites, tagging, and ratings of each video. The existing Yahoo! Video site does not include any user-submitted content or metadata.

For more on this story, click here and here.