HealthCare.com buys health insurance ad network

HealthCare.com, an online directory of health care providers that competes in the so-called health 2.0 space with companies such as OrganizedWisdom, announced on Thursday that it has acquired BrokersWeb, a targeted, performance-based online-advertising firm that caters to health insurance brokers, for an undisclosed sum. With the acquisition, it gains control of BrokersWeb's consumer health insurance search engine, Health Insurance Finders.

"The acquisition of BrokersWeb strengthens our presence and fits within HealthCare.com's mission to help consumers make better health care decisions," said Matias de Tezanos, founder and chief executive of HealthCare.com. "From a business standpoint, the acquisition brings together a leading media property and a proprietary monetization platform that HealthCare.com will be able to expand."

BrokersWeb provides more than 250 health industry advertisers with pay-per-click advertising generated from health insurance queries. The company allows advertisers to bid for placement in its paid listings and provides them with return-on-investment analytics to help them make informed ad campaign decisions.

According to company spokesman Jose Vargas, Health Insurance Finders will continue to operate as a standalone site, though some of its features will help enrich HealthCare.com.

Article News: CNET

Google launches limited API support for OpenID

On Wednesday Google formally announced its support as a provider for the OpenID 2.0 protocol, offering some site owners a way to let users log-in and register for new accounts using existing Google account information. More importantly, Google will be letting these same users manage all their linked account information in one central location.

This new log-in offering is not available to all site owners just yet. Google has set up a sign-up form where developers can apply with their URL and OpenID identification to get access. Plaxo and Zoho are two of the first sites to already have the new system in place, with Zoho having offered a similar option since mid-April.

As many have already noted this isn't OpenID proper. Microsoft's usage of OpenID, announced on Tuesday at PDC, will let users simply drop in their special OpenID URL as their identifier, forsaking the need for a Google account. Google's foray into this is strictly as a provider, adding extra value for those who register for a Google account, while keeping users with OpenIDs from other providers out.

OpenID enthusiasts shouldn't fret though. Just because Google isn't opening up its own sites to OpenID log-ins from others doesn't mean it's not around the corner. Google's Eric Sachs notes that the company is working to try and combine OpenID and identity management service OAuth, which means there's still work to be done on the personal information front. Google is unlikely to jump into being a service provider for OpenID until this is squared away.

Article source: CNET

Hot Topic launches DRM-free music service

Hot Topic, a clothing and accessories retailer catering to those interested in alternative music, announced Wednesday that it has launched ShockHound, the company's first online music site offering millions of MP3s, band merchandise, music videos, and editorial content.

According to Hot Topic, Shockhound offers tracks from major record labels, like Universal Music Group, Sony BMG, Warner Music Group, and EMI Music, as well as independent labels. The company also says that artists will be able to upload and sell their own music directly to users without requiring a record label to act as the broker between Shockhound and the artist.

"Our goal was to create an authentic, online experience of music discovery," says Betsy McLaughlin, CEO of Hot Topic. "A place where fellow music lovers can come together and explore, share their likes and dislikes, read the latest music news, and enjoy exclusive content on their favorite artists."

One of the unique features ShockHound will offer is its editorial section. The site will feature reviews, music news, interviews, original programming, and music videos that are controlled by the editorial team on the site.

Although Hot Topic is well-known for its alternative rock products, ShockHound features music from all genres, so the service definitely has its sights set on competing with iTunes and Amazon.com's MP3 DRM-free store. But unlike iTunes tracks, each ShockHound song is DRM-free.

For those interested in buying tracks from Hot Topic's service, each song retails for 99 cents and can be downloaded on the ShockHound page.

Article source: CNET

Noteflight puts music composition in your browser

Fledgling musicians looking to ditch expensive composition software might want to check out Noteflight. It's a composition community that lets you put together musical scores right in your browser--that is, as long as you know what you're doing.

The good news is that the service's composition tools are wonderfully simple to use. Instead of requiring a MIDI keyboard to enter notes, you can simply plug them in with your keyboard and/or mouse. Each note can be modified with a simple drop down menu that follows you as you move around the page. It also contains an option to change pitch, note length, and the tempo. Advanced users can dig a little deeper with things like key and time signatures, and bar line styles.

What makes the service really neat is that you can see the work of others, and in some cases make changes. The sharing options let you toggle this on and off, and also lets you embed entire pieces elsewhere, like I've done below:

Article source : CNET

Metaplace secures funding for its virtual world

Metaplace, a company that plans on letting users build a virtual world and use social networking conventions to allow groups to enjoy them, announced today that it raised $6.7 million of funding in a round that was led by Charles River Ventures and Crescendo Ventures, as well as independent investors, Marc Andreessen and Ben Horowitz.

Somewhat similar to Second Life, Metaplace creates an online virtual world for people across the globe to interact with. But unlike Second Life and There.com, Metaplace uses an open platform to allow users to create, build, and live in their own unique virtual world. The company claims that it wants its users to create a "network of worlds--from community to games to education to business" that will allow people to collaborate, socialize, and "conduct commerce" as they do in the real world.

Metaplace is currently in private beta and has only allowed a few thousand people to use the service. But in the coming weeks, it will open the beta to more users in the hope that it will grow into a service that brings together the virtues of both virtual worlds and social networks.

Whether or not Metaplace can thrive where Second Life and There.com couldn't remains to be seen. The company's idea to create a virtual world has been done before and so far, competitors simply haven't been able to capitalize on a relatively inactive user base. Regardless, Metaplace thinks it will be different.

Article source: CNET

7 Places to Find the Code You Need

A recent on SitePoint’s forums discussed how best to learn from other people’s code. For many people learning by example is the optimal way to pick up a new programming language, idea, or technique. But finding that ideal piece of code to look at and learn from isn’t always easy. That’s where code search engines and snippet libraries come into play.

The seven listed below are the top places we could find that will help you locate the piece of code you’ve been looking for. But as always, if we’re missed any, please let us know in the comments below.

Popular open source code repository and version control web service GitHub launched a new Code Search feature today. Even though it’s the new kid on the block, GitHub has become super popular in a very short space of time and hosts a ton of public repositories. In a blog post, GitHub’s Scott Chacon classifies the amount of code searched as “a lot.”

Krugle claims to search over 2.5 billion lines of open source code, making them one of the largest source code search engines on the web. They claim to reach over a third of all developers world wide, and their enterprise search product powers code search for Amazon Web Services, IBM developerWorks, Collab.net, SourceForge.net, and Yahoo! Developer Network.

Koders, which claims to search over a billion lines of code, seems to be a favorite among Ruby programmers. In a press release announcing the company’s acquisition by Black Duck Software last month, the site revealed the Ruby searches were up 20-fold over the past four years and have passed PHP, Perl, and Python. Ruby is now the fourth most searched for language on the site behind only Java, C/C+ and C#.

Codase is the little guy on the block, weighing in at just 250 million lines of code searched, according to the site. That might be because development on the search engines appears to have stalled a couple of years ago. Codase focuses mainly on Linux C/C++ open source projects and appears out of date, so unless that’s what you’re looking for, there are better options out there.

With over 13,000 users contributing to over 5,000 code snippets, the DZone Snippets library is a great place to find good code examples. It’s certainly not the easiest site to browse, but there is some gold hidden for those who look. Exercise patience and you may find exactly what you need at DZone’s site.

Snipplr is a nicely designed code snippet library that has less users than DZone (just under 10,000), but more code snippets to crawl through — almost 8,000. And it seems to be gaining steam — more than half of the site’s snippets were added in the past year, even though the site is over 2 years old. Oh, and they have handy plugins for Textmate, Gedit, and Wordpress, and bookmarklets for Firefox and Safari. Very nicely executed.

Last, but certainly not least, is Google Code Search, the grand daddy of all code search engines. While the people at Krugle and Koders may argue the point, and Google doesn’t say how many lines of code they’re searching, when you’re talking search, Google is always the team to beat. Their code search engine searches a ton of public source code repositories — including GitHub, Sourceforge, and their own Google Code site. And Google supports a ton of languages.

Article source: Sitepoint

Google reaches $125 million settlement with authors

Google will be paying authors and publishers $125 million as part of a settlement agreement that resolves a suit against its Google Book Search initiative, the Authors Guild and a group of publishers announced Tuesday.

The settlement enables authors and publishers to receive compensation for online access to their works.

Paul Aiken, executive director of the Authors Guild, called the settlement "the biggest book deal in U.S. publishing history."


Google is digitizing the works from many major libraries, including the New York Public Library and the libraries at Stanford and Harvard universities, and is making those texts searchable on pages with advertisements. The Authors Guild, which represents more than 8,000 authors, sued Google in September 2005, alleging that the company's digitizing initiative amounted to "massive" copyright infringement. Five large publishers filed a separate lawsuit as representatives of the Association of American Publishers.

Under the terms of the settlement, Google has agreed to pay the authors and publishers $125 million. It will also be responsible for selling access to copyrighted works in its repository. Most of the revenues from such access would go to the authors and publishers.

Currently, users of Google Book Search are able to view snippets of books online. The settlement agreement allows Google to make whole pages of copyright works available to online searchers. Users will be able to preview up to 20 percent of a book and purchase the book if they choose to, said David Drummond, senior vice president of corporate development and chief legal officer for Google.

All public libraries in the United States will be offered a free online portal to Google's digitized collection, said Aiken, and patrons will be able to print an unlimited number of pages for a per page fee. Google will also be offering institutional subscriptions to colleges and universities. Google Book Search services available outside the United States will remain the same, Drummond said.

Article source: CNET