The buzz around the One laptop per child (OLPC) group has heightened this week. One laptop per child is a non-profit organization which works:

To provide children around the world with new opportunities to explore, experiment and express themselves.

OLPC has an intriguing and bold mission: to bring cheap, small, durable laptops to children in the developing world.

This month the OLPC project built and deployed the final round of beta machines. Thanks to some great innovative minds–including OLPC Chairman Nicholas Negroponte–the beliefs sustaining this project and its unique approach to education have been developing for many years. While some countries such as Uruguay, Libya and Rwanda have already signed up, Negroponte and OPLC hope to persuade more developing nations to commit to the OLPC project as they roll out their latest in durable, accessible, child-sized laptop technology.

The blogosphere has been abuzz lately over the new JJ Abrams produced movie trailer currently running before Transformers in theatres. In a rare and unprecedented move, the trailer presented no title for the movie, only showing a release date of January 18, 2008. However it is known that production crews are referring to the movie as “Cloverfield”.

The trailer is as shocking as it is mysterious, beginning with Manhattan revelers at a going away party and ending with some sort of massive explosion levelling skyscrapers and actually beheading the statue of liberty. There are many theories about what the movie is about, some suggest an alien attack, others believe it may be some sort of sea monster or even a continuation of the JJ Abrams produced series, Lost.

Whatever the case, JJ Abrams and company are already mounting quite a successful viral marketing campaign that has many scratching their heads. It has been reported that slusho.jp is one incognito site connected to the movie with more predicted to be on the way. Members of the marketing and advertising industry are already praising this campaign for its cleverness are no doubt interested to see if this unique campaign will translate into dollars at the box office.

Neilsen//NetRatings has recently shaken the Web 2.0 world up a bit with the addition of a “Total Minutes” metric to its syndicated Internet audience measurement service. Neilsen contends that the “Total Minutes” measurement delivers greater perspective on total engagement across sites.

Scott Ross, director of product marketing for NetView stated:

“Total Minutes is the best engagement metric in this initial stage of Web 2.0 development, not only because it ensures fair measurement of Web sites using RIA and streaming media, but also of Web environments that have never been well-served by the page view, such as online gaming and Internet applications”

Nielsen explains that while Rich Internet Application (RIA) technologies have enhanced consumer experience, the explosion of such applications poses unique challenges to Internet audience measurement. Visitors to sites that employee RIA technology can access content without fully reloading Web pages, thus making page views a less relevant measurement of the users’ engagement.

This change in focus to “Total Minutes” has shifted the spotlight for a few sites. AOL now ranks first based on the amount of time users spend on a given page whereas it only comes in sixth based on the page view metric. Yahoo moves up in rank as well, while Google falls from third to fifth when gauged by time spent as opposed to page views.

The most successful social-networking site in the U.S., MySpace, has landed in Europe and in less then two years, it has catapulted to the top in terms of page views and unique visitors leaving its competitors (FaceBook, Bebo and Ringo) in the dust. How they went about accomplishing this feat is the purpose of this blog entry.

MySpace entered the European continent via the United Kingdom and this proved to be a low risk move for the company, since English is the official language in the UK, which required fewer changes to the MySpace site. Soon after, the company rolled out country-specific sites across Europe in countries such as Germany, France, Spain and hired in-country staff that was empowered to localize the sites to fit the local culture. MySpace’s key move for success was not to bring to Europe the American model that was successful for them in the U.S, but instead come up with a new model for each country.

How successful has this strategy been for MySpace? BusinessWeek reports the number of unique visitors to MySpace online properties in Europe has grown at a rate of about 72% in the past year alone, bringing the number of monthly unique visitors to about 26 million (source: BusinessWeek.com, 07/10/2007, “How MySpace Conquered the Continent”).

I would say MySpace’s international strategy in Europe has been very successful given these numbers. Whether they went into Europe alone, or partnered with local companies via joint ventures to share the risk, MySpace is getting it right. They are reaching their intended audiences by leveraging the local know-how of managers that have been empowered to make decisions at the local level without the meddling of corporate folks back in the U.S.

To learn more about about MySpace on what they’re doing, visit the Times Business PodCast

This week Boeing introduced their much anticipated Dreamliner commercial aircraft. Touting itself as a “super-efficient” airliner using carbon fibre in 50% of the fuselage and engines which burn less fuel. The craft can carry up to 250 passengers at distances up to 8,200 nautical miles.

The unveiling of the craft was quite a spectical with visitors and staff actually getting close enough to the jumbo jet to touch it. The airline industry also seems to be excited about the new jet, with 677 orders already placed.

Check out the following video on EveryZing to see for yourself!

Live Earth was a 24-hour, 7-continent concert series that took place on 7/7/07. The concert series brought together more than 100 music artists and 2 billion people in hopes of generating a global environmental movement. The eight official concerts took place in New York, London, Sydney, Tokyo, Shanghai, Rio de Janeiro, Johannesburg and Hamburg.

What was unique about Live Earth was the unprecedented global media structure which covered all media platforms from TV, to radio, to Internet and wireless channels. By 3 p.m. EDT, MSN had received a total of more than 10 million video streams and Live Earth could claim the most simultaneous viewers of any online concert ever. Yet 7/7/07 should prove just beginning for Live Earth; on-demand footage of all performances, artist interviews, and backstage footage remain available from the eight official concerts at LiveEarth.MSN.com for the next several weeks.

Those involved in the production of the Live Earth Concerts desire to create an impact beyond typical entertainment; the end goal is to create an engaged, environmentally aware global audience. Kevin Wall, founder and producer of Live Earth contends:

“By providing the opportunity to view the shows in their entirety online, coupled with our unique solutions campaign we’re able to communicate this message on a mass-scale in a way that engages people and inspires them to act.”

The presidential race for 2008 is in full swing and you can turn to EveryZing to get all the latest news updates about the candidates by tuning into our Presidential Candidates Channel
If you’re interested in a particular candidate, you can also search for them individually on EveryZing. Simply click on the links below to get the latest audio and video:

Hillary Clinton

John McCain

Barack Obama

Mitt Romney

John Edwards

Rudy Giuliani

No, this does not have to do with how long your food is safe after it has fallen on the ground. The new “45 Second Rule” refers to the allowed length of video clips from team facilities that news stations and non NFL Web sites are allowed to play daily. With the increasing prominence of Internet video, sports leagues feel they must compete with media Web sites when it comes to attracting viewers and advertisers. While other major league sports may express their concern, the NFL has made football the only sport to impose such restrictions thus far.

As NFL spokesman Greg Aiello states in washingtonpost.com article “Under NFL Rule, Media Web Sites Are Given Just 45 Seconds to Score”:

“We have no interest in controlling or limiting what news Web sites do, except limiting the use of video that undermines our own Internet operations. We have important business interests on the Internet, and we have to be careful about that.”

Still, many fear that fans will miss out on valuable content under the new restrictions. Journalists certainly do not embrace the policy either, as evidenced by Houston Chronicle sports columnist John McClain’s video satire of the restrictions.