Feedburner Pro is now Free

Way back in May, Google bought Feedburner. Even though I run into lots of people who look at me like I'm from another planet when I start talking about RSS feeds, I'm sure everyone reading this knows what a RSS feed is.

If you are one of those strange people who think that big, towering piles of money would be a really neat thing to have, reportedly Google paid $100 Million for Feedburner.

According to Tech Crunch, although you still have to "upgrade" to the "Pro", nothing is billed. If you already have a Feedburner Pro account, then nothing will be billed effective with the June billing cycle.

I have my feed through feedburner, but to be honest, I never do anything on their site. I will have to say, it works, and I haven't had to do much of anything with it since I set it up.

For more on the Google front, Google is continuing its buying spree, with the recently announced purchase of GrandCentral Communications. Of course, you already know that Google bought DoubleClick, and they really have been making some moves to build what looks like a health care network or portal (here, and here). Heck, if you are looking for a blog idea, you could probably have one that just reports Google stuff. Oh wait, there already are a bunch of those like Inside Google, The unofficial Google Weblog, Google Weblog, and too many others to list.

Now with Folders - Google Docs and SpreadSheets

I was very surprised when I accidentally clicked on the Docs and Spreadsheets link in Gmail, and realized that Google has added the ability to organize your items into folders.

Well, kind of.

They basically have taken the tags that you assign to items, and placed a little folder icon next to them. Items can exist in multiple folders, just like they have multiple tags.

This will fix one complaint that I hear over and over from people about GMail, they can't use folders to organize their email. I never had the problem, I view the tags just like folders. If you click on a tag, you get a view which only holds the items with that particular tag.

The advantage, of course, is that items can have more than one tag, where in a true folder system, the item can only exist in one folder.

Even though Google introduced folders, they didn't introduce sub-folders. They just don't work.

The layout for the new interface looks just like the folder layout that Outlook uses, and Yahoo Mail, and Hotmail, and Windows Explorer, and File Manager (remember that one?) and well, you get the picture. It is a big improvement over the last interface though, and in the new interface, you can drag and drop items into the folders. Pretty nice.

The interface was announced tuesday on the Google Blog, and contrary to a previous post of mine, Google Docs might start to be some type of competition for Microsoft Office, especially if they enable Google Gears for it.

More Reading:

"Google Docs and Spreadsheets updates" - Jeff Stalnaker

"Google Docs Gets Organized (and a new look)" - OgasaWalrus.com

"New Google Docs Launched" - Googlified

"Google Docs - Some Issues" - Satish's Blog

Internet Radio Observes a Day of Silence

Attempting to draw more attention to the "Internet Radio Equality Act", many Internet radio stations are observing a day of silence today. Pandora is one of the more popular services, one which I use and love, and it too is silent today.

Pandora has posted a open letter to Internet radio users, written by Tim Westergren, here is a brief excerpt from that letter.

Ignoring all rationality and responding only to the lobbying of the RIAA, an arbitration committee in Washington DC has drastically increased the licensing fees Internet radio sites must pay to stream songs. Pandora's fees will triple, and are retroactive for eighteen months! Left unchanged by Congress, every day will be like today as internet radio sites start shutting down and the music dies.

A bill called the "Internet Radio Equality Act" has already been introduced in both the Senate (S. 1353) and House of Representatives (H.R. 2060) to fix the problem and save Internet radio--and Pandora--from obliteration.

Please contact your local representatives, and ask them to support the "Internet Radio Equality Act", you can find contact info for them here, and you can also visit www.savenetradio.org to see what else you can do.

More reading:

Help save Internet Radio - My Blog

SaveInternetRadio.Org

"Internet Radio "Day of Silence" hushes thousands of stations" - ArsTechnica

"Radio Free Internet: Broadcasters Protest Rate Hikes With Silence" - Wired

Help Save Internet Radio

If you have been listening to or reading any Tech related news sites, then I'm sure that you've heard about the recent decision by the Copyright Royalty Board to increase the royalties that internet radio stations have to pay.

If you aren't familiar with the decision, here is a fun breakdown of the change:

• Will almost Triple what internet Radio stations pay now.
  
• The new fees are more than four times what Satellite Radio Pays.
  
• Broadcast Radio does not pay these fees at all.
  
• They are retro-active back to 2006, although at a slightly lower fee.
  

  I think this is a big crock.
  

  SaveNetRadio.Org has a nice little form that you can use to contact your elected officials, so flex your democratic muscles and take a minute to fill it out.
  

  Some more reading:
  

  Save Net Radio.org
  

  Net Radio: 'New Song Royalties Will Kill Us' - PCWorld
  

Win a Nintendo Wii from John Chow

That evil blog mogul John Chow is at it again.

I think this man is the root of all evil.

This time, he is giving away a Nintendo Wii to some random blogger who is able to follow the intricate rules of his contest. The rules are so complicated, that I doubt there will be many posts that qualify, and only the most pathetic blog monkeys will be able to jump through all of the hoops necessary.

You can see these ridiculous rules at "Evil Blog Contest - Win a Nintendo Wii", evidently the Wii was given to him by a promotional pens company 1234Pens.

Google offers all of its free apps now as a service

On the Google Blog they announced the availability of their applications in a convenient subscription model. Now you can pay $50 per user, per year, and get all their wonderful free apps. They are calling the bundle Google Apps Enterprise.

They are also offering editions for families and groups, small businesses, and schools.

Wait a minute, I can pay for something that they have been offering for free? Let me jump on that train.

I'm not sure how successful this is going to be, of course Google has eleventy hundred gillion users, but really, are the apps that good?

I haven't used Calendar or spreadsheets, and only briefly used Talk. I use Documents sometimes, but if they discontinued the free service and started charging $1 a month, I would quit using it so fast that my Google cookie would be left hanging in the air, spinning around.

I had joked that one day in the future I would reminisce about the good old days when Microsoft almost had a Monopoly on operating systems and software, because now Google controls everything. Maybe this is the beginning. Maybe next it will be Google Democracy.

Thanks to Paul Thurrott for pointing it out.

Update: Wired News has a article titled "Google Apps: Should you switch?" and there were a few things that I thought were wrong about it.

1. The Article States that:

"Pricing is set at $50 per user per year, less expensive than Microsoft Office but with much the same functionality. Microsoft has its own web-based suite of tools in Office Live, but the company's offering doesn't match Google's. And Google isn't going after Office Live, it's going after Office."

Um, no Offense Michal Calore, but have you actually used the two sets of applications?

Google Docs isn't even close to Word. I haven't used spreadsheets at all, but I'm sure that it is limited as well. Sure, if you need a word processor, then go ahead and use Docs and Spreadsheets, but I just could not imaging using Google Docs and Spreadsheets exclusively.

2. He does mention that there isn't a PowerPoint equivalent, although I thought I had read that there was a Google Presentation app coming out, I haven't seen it. Yes, PowerPoint is a hugely popular program, but let's not forget Access. I know Google Base can't compete with that.

I also think that there isn't an Outlook killer either, at least not for a corporate environment. Outlook has a whole slew of nice features that GMail and Calendar just can't match.