The Three Things You Need to Succeed Online

• are market timing, passion, and a unique data source. If you have none of those you are screwed. Of course you can get by well with only one of them for a long time, but the more of them you have the more sustainable your business model will be.via

Every Google hidden feature on one page

What happens when you cram every Google hidden and non-hidden feature on one page? You get a very full page.
Simply Google gives you access to every nook and cranny of the Googlesphere in one convenient spot. Even we found things we'd forgotten about. The Google drones have been super busy, maybe it's all the great food in their cafeteria?via

Ask.com to Spend $100m to Buy Market Share

• Can Ask.com buy additional market share for the sum of $100 million?
• That’s what it hopes to do, with a marketing blitz this summer, that will see the search engine try and convince searchers to give the company a try. “We have a number of ways to tell people about Ask, its tools, and why it should be used (and) why you should make a change from Google,” IAC Chairman and CEO Barry Diller said at the Reuters Global Technology, Media and Telecoms Summit in New York. “We’ll spend this year probably, on media, close to a hundred million dollars to promote Ask,” he said.
• The campaign will include TV ads as well as the same “shock” billboard strategy that has been used in Britain. How many percentage points will $100m buy? We’ll have to wait until the fall and see if Ask has increased its audience size. via

Another Break In The Wall: Amazon.com to Sell DRM-Free Music

• Amazon.com have announced that they will be launching a digital music store later this year with one particular feature that is sure to bring a smile to many: the store will only sell DRM-free MP3 music files.
• As with Apple in April, EMI Music’s digital catalog will be key to the new Amazon DRM-Free offering.
• It’s a great step forward for consumers. Having every song and album available exclusively in the MP3 format and DRM-free will mean no more hassles with compatibility and ownership. Buyers will know that once they buy the music, they own the music and are free to use it on anything, anywhere for personal use.
• The decision is also another step in bringing down the DRM wall. There may have been a lot of interest and discussion in relation to Apple’s announcement in April, but it’s easily forgotten that as the most popular destination for legal digital music, Apple is also the biggest seller of DRM infected music. Amazon selling only DRM-free music sends a message that a leading retailer is willing to back consumers over big business and that a digital music business can be built and continued using only DRM-free products. via

Social Networking Comes to Fishing

• Just when you’d thought you’d seen everything, along comes Angling Masters, a social networking site for recreational fisherman that also supports the creation of user generated online fishing tournaments.
• Angling Masters has the standard features you would expect from a MySpace style social networking platform. Users are given their own page (called a cabin) and can add photos, buddies (friends), maintain a blog and list personal details such as location, memberships etc. The layout is slick. It has a nice, be it somewhat masculine feel to it, but unlike the many MySpace clones out there some one actually thought this one through.
• The addition of user generated online fishing tournaments is claimed to be a first and I couldn’t find any other site competing in the space.
• The “Buddy Tournament feature” allows users to create and participate in online competitions with their fishing “buddies” located anywhere in North America. The vast differences in rivers, lakes and the many fish species inhabiting them is overcome with an interesting twist. Length conversion tables and a series of algorithms allow fish of one species to be compared to fish of another, no matter where they were caught so all participants compete on a level playing field. 12 species of fish are covered and the back end considers how large each species typically grows in each geographic region and scores fish caught accordingly.
• Cheating is overcome with tournaments having options such as requiring a witness for the catch and/or the requirement of participating anglers to use the official Angling Masters Measuring Tape to provide accurate measurements of the fish.
• If fishing is your thing there are some great features on this site. The idea of competing in fishing competitions online seems so simple I’m surprised it hasn’t been done before.
• via