Darren Straight’s Blog

Great News for those of you going to reading Festival 2007. Mean Fiddler’s Reading Festival organiser and boss Melvin Benn has given the festival the all clear despite the floods which have left parts of the site still underwater.

He said the field where the arena stands is relatively dry, but around 30 per cent of the campsite is under water.

He added: “I am sure this flood water will subside fairly quickly – we have seen it like this in the past. It was very wet in 2003. But the land will still be very wet. I expect that by the time we get to the festival date we will still not be able to use 10 to 15 per cent of the camping area.”

Mr Benn is already planning to use part of the car parking area at Scours Lane for campers and land on the other side of the river at Mapledurham, providing a ferry to carry them across to the music arena.

He said: “It will mean that some of the festival-goers won’t be quite as close to the action as they might like to be, but it can’t be helped.”

The Reading Festival site operators will gradually move on to the site this week to prepare for the event, which runs from Friday, August 24, to Sunday, August 26.

Digg and Microsoft have announced an agreement in which the two
companies will collaborate to bring relevant advertising to the more than
17 million unique monthly visitors to Digg, an innovative Web site that
harnesses the collective wisdom of the world’s online audience to
prioritize the overwhelming amount of content available on the Web.

Microsoft’s advanced advertising technology and sales force combined with
Digg’s unique and growing user community make possible the three-year
collaboration, grounded in the companies’ commitment to technological
innovation and user experience.

As part of the relationship, Microsoft will be the exclusive provider
of display and contextual advertising on Digg. The two companies also
agreed to work together on future technology and advertising initiatives.

“Our collaboration with Digg is about bringing our advertising
technology and sales force to one of the fastest-growing sites on the Web
and a true innovator in user-generated content,” said Steve Berkowitz,
senior vice president of the Online Services Group at Microsoft. “We
believe advertisers will welcome Microsoft and Digg’s combined strengths to
forge more meaningful connections online.”
Microsoft and Federated Media Publishing, Digg’s current advertising
partner, plan to collaborate to bring integrated programs to Digg’s users
and advertisers. “Federated Media has unique advertising sales assets that
dovetail with our efforts, and we look forward to working with them,”
Berkowitz said.

“We’re now positioned to provide a world-class advertising solution
that builds upon Digg’s philosophy of providing a great experience for
users and advertisers,” said Jay Adelson, CEO of Digg. “As the Digg
audience continues to grow and diversify, we believe that this initiative
with Microsoft, and the resources that it provides, will enable us to focus
less on developing an advertising infrastructure and more on developing new
and innovative features for the site.”

“We are thrilled to work with these two world-class companies,” said John Battelle, founder and CEO of Federated Media. “Digg is truly a
remarkable brand.”

The companies expect to begin execution of the agreement in the coming
weeks.

Have you heard of the BBC iPlayer?

The BBC iPlayer is a downloadable application from the BBC which offers you a range of BBC television programmes to download to your PC from the last seven days. It’s been in private beta for some time now and in the making even longer but all that is soon coming to an end, well at least the private/closed beta.

Because tomorrow the 27th of August 2007, the BBC is opening up the BBC iPlayer Beta live to everyone, though it is worth noting that everyone is maybe not the right word to  use here as there are currently some restrictions in place if you which to download it, these are as follows:

Country: United Kingdom Only
Operating system: Windows XP SP2
Browser: Internet explorer 6.0 or above
Media Player: Windows Media Player 10 or above
Net connection: Broadband

Check it out here: http://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayerbeta/

Microsoft has once again released another game to promote Windows Live, this time it’s a game called Microsoft Live Derby 2007. Within this game, you drive around a little car through the cities of either San Francisco, Seattle, New York, Las Vegas or London in which you have to try and pick up the little pellets (pac man style dots) and all the live search map location pins. It’s pretty cool for what it is, and hey it promotes Windows Live Search, so I already love it!

Check it out at:  http://www.livederby2007.com/

It seems that the Web 2.0 datacenter 365 Main, in the heart of SOMA, has lost it’s power. Sites that are affected include Craigstlist, Technorati, Yelp, Netflix, AdBrite and all Six Apart properties, TypePad, LiveJournal and Vox.

There isn’t much information available as to what has caused this - but you can check out these links for some more info on the situation:

• O’Reilly
• Laughing squid
• Robert Scoble
• Six Apart twitter stream

Update: looks like http://www.365main.com/ is back online along with Technorati:

Technorati fell victim to a swarm of power outages beginning at about 1:50 p.m. PDT Tuesday, July 24, 2007 that affected all of San Francisco and as far south as Daly City and South San Francisco, according to news reports. Our offices at Third and Townsend and one of our two co-location facilities were affected. We are working with our co-location facility managers to assess why it is back-up power generators failed to provide the necessary back-up power to prevent our site going down. We apologize for any inconvenience caused by our site being unavailable this afternoon.

It’s the 24th of July 2007 today, so guess what? There’s only 30 days left until Reading and Leeds Festival 2007!

So as Reading and Leeds Festival 2007 is only a short way away, I thought id once again post the full and complete Reading and Leeds Festival Lineup so far, but this time I’ve also linked to all the artists and bands my space pages so if you haven’t heard of the artist or band before you can check out their my space and listen to their music to see if you like them or not - took me quite a while to to get all the links, so I hope you find it useful!

As well as these my space links, I’ve also provided a list of links to both Official and Unofficial Reading and Leeds Festival Websites, as well as some other cool stuff!

And hey to all of those going to Reading feel free to come and say hello to me when there!

Main Stage

NME/Radio 1 Stage

Dance Arena

Radio 1 Lock-Up Stage

Carling Stage

Links

• Reading Festival Official Site
• Leeds Festival Official Site
• Strictly Reading
• Strictly Leeds
• First Time at Reading? Most things you need to know. [Reading Guide]
• Brand Spanking New Checklist - now in colour!
• FAQ – Before the Festival and Getting to the Festival
• FAQ – Food and Drink
• FAQ - Leaving the Festival and Going Home *sob*
• FAQ – Miscellaneous
• FAQ – The Festival Site, Camping and Car Parking
• FAQ – The Line Up, In the Arena and Seeing Bands
• FAQ - Wednesday entrance
• FAQ - Tickets
• ***Festival Maps - A Guide To The Site***
• General Festival Advice
• The Definitive Tent Guide!

Have you heard of ParkatmyHouse.com yet? It’s a new and innovative system of parking which provides affordable, penalty-free and secure spaces around public venues in various town and cities such as London, Brighton and glasgow by enabling property-owners with empty driveways, garages and car parks to rent them out to drivers needing somewhere to park.

Commuters on their way to a train station, hospital or sports stadium for example, can make an arrangement with a homeowner to use his or her driveway on a one-off or regular, short-term or long-term basis.

ParkatmyHouse.com was founded by 23 year-old Anthony Eskinazi whilst on holiday in San Francisco back in June 2006 and since the service launched, ParkatmyHouse.com has featured on BBC radio stations, in nearly all the national newspapers including The Times, The Daily Express and The Observer and in an array of international media.

Homeowners currently advertising their space on ParkatmyHouse.com are earning as much as £5,500 a year and elderly and disabled drivers, commuters on their way to work and mums needing easy-to-access parking around shops and schools are just some of the people benefiting from the service.

Here’s how the site works in 7 lucky steps:

1. To add a space, property-owners simply register an account on ParkatmyHouse.com and follow the on-screen instructions.  Listing a space is completely free.
2. Drivers (‘parkers’) looking for a space enter a postcode, city or keywords related to their desired location in the search bar at the top of the page.
3. The site’s unique interactive map system will show parkers where exactly available spaces are located, local services that are nearby (including restaurants, stations and entertainment venues), how much the space costs to rent and relevant additional details such as whether the space is secure or lit.
4. The calendar feature displays the exact times when Parking spaces are available to rent.  Prices are completely set by the space owner.
5. Once a transaction has been completed and confirmed, a contract is automatically generated and can be optionally downloaded, printed and signed by both parties.
6. If parkers don’t find a space which matches their requirements, they can request automatic notification when one does become available.  
7. A ten per cent commission fee is charged for successful transactions.

Microsoft has now announced revenue of $13.37 billion for the fourth quarter ending on the 30th of June 2007, that is a 13% increase over the same period of the prior year. Diluted earnings per share for the quarter were $0.31. Excluding $0.08 of previously announced charges primarily related to Xbox 360™ warranty policies, earnings per share would have been $0.39, an increase of 26% over the same period of the prior year when also adjusted for certain items.For the fiscal year ending on the 30th of June 2007, Microsoft announced a total revenue of $51.12 billion, a 15% increase over the prior year. Diluted earnings per share for the year were $1.42. Excluding certain items, earnings per share would have been $1.49, an increase of 17% over the prior year when also adjusted for certain items. $31 billion in cash, or approximately 175% of operating cash flow, was returned to shareholders during the year through share buybacks and dividends.

“Surpassing $50 billion in annual sales is a testament to the innovation and value that our product groups delivered into the marketplace, as well as the outstanding execution by our field sales, marketing teams and partners to bring that value to life with our customers,” said Kevin Turner, chief operating officer at Microsoft.  “In fiscal year 2008, we will continue to drive growth through new product offerings, such as Windows Server 2008, Visual Studio 2008, SQL Server 2008, Office PerformancePoint Server 2007, and Microsoft Dynamics Live CRM.”

This fiscal year marked the general availability of Microsoft’s flagship products, Windows Vista and the 2007 Microsoft Office system. Revenue growth was primarily driven by solid customer acceptance of these products, as well as increasing sales of existing products such as SQL Server, Windows Server, Visual Studio, and Xbox 360™ consoles.

“Our results this quarter cap off an extremely strong fiscal year for the company,” said Chris Liddell, chief financial officer at Microsoft.  “We have healthy core businesses and are strategically investing in growth opportunities, which will build on our success and contribute to continued double-digit revenue and earnings growth in fiscal year 2008.”

Microsoft management offers the following guidance for the quarter ending September 30, 2007:

Management offers the following guidance for the full fiscal year ending June 30, 2008:

Whether you’re having another day at the office or enjoying downtime at home, if you’re a user of the Windows Live Messenger network, then you are just a click away from exploring a new virtual world as Microsoft Casual Games partners with GoPets Ltd. to launch GoPets on Windows Live Messenger.

Inhabited by pets that owners create and customize, the virtual GoPets world on Windows Live Messenger offers environments to explore, casual games to play, groups to join and countless ways to express individuality. The relationship between Microsoft and GoPets Ltd. brings about the unique integration of a virtual world into an instant messaging (IM) service.

Though it has to be said that GoPets is only exclusively available on the Windows Live Messenger network in the United States, Australia, Japan and Korea, with expansion planned to more than 30 countries by the end of 2007.

“GoPets on Windows Live Messenger takes instant messaging to the next level of 3-D interactivity,” said Chris Early, product unit manager for Microsoft Casual Games. “Teaming up with GoPets enables us to provide the Windows Live Messenger network with this new social networking experience.”

Imagine an office worker in China sending his bamboo-eating panda to surf the waves down under. Or a Texas housewife’s country-music-loving dog frolicking on the desktop of a schoolteacher in London. Much like a virtual dog park, GoPets offers users a great way to meet and socialize with others in the Windows Live Messenger network around the world. Curious and inquisitive, these virtual pets love bringing owners together who share similar interests, regardless of borders or language barriers.

“GoPets is an online community where anyone can adopt a pet, customize it to their liking and interact with other pet owners anywhere in the GoPets virtual world at any time of day,” said Erik Bethke, CEO and founder of GoPets Ltd. “With direct access through Windows Live Messenger, it will be even easier for pet fans to make friends all over the world through common interests and shared experiences, such as chatting and playing games on the Windows Live Messenger and GoPets platforms.”

With a growing user base of nearly 260 million active accounts worldwide, Windows Live Messenger is the world’s most-used IM service. Current Windows Live Messenger users in more than 30 countries can travel the world with GoPets by visiting http://games.msn.com/en/general/article/mgopmessengerlaunch.htm or by clicking the Games icon on the left side of the Windows Live Messenger window and selecting GoPets. New Windows Live Messenger users can visit http://messenger.live.com to connect and share instantly on the world’s most popular IM network.

Microsoft, is scheduled to release its fourth quarter 2007 fiscal results on Thursday the 19th of July. A live webcast will be made available at 2:30 p.m. Pacific Time. Anyone want to guess the figures?