Education and reference

Which business model is likely to be the most successful: MySpace, YouTube, Facebook, or Second Life?

According to a war game played out at London's Business School last week, MySpace wins. But, in a conclusion that was validated by this week's Viacom lawsuit against Google and YouTube for copyright infringement, the participants concluded that both MySpace and YouTube are vulnerable to legal attacks and government regulations that target illegal activities and objectionable content, such as child pedophilia and pornography.

Copyright lawsuits will be a "major distraction at best or they could undermine" the businesses, says Leonard Fuld, president of Boston-based Fuld & Co., which ran the war game. "Sexy and cool as MySpace and YouTube seem, they are prone to attacks."

Meanwhile, the team of students representing MySpace successfully convinced the panel of experts who judged the war game that MySpace has the most viable business strategy among the social network sites. "MySpace won the game by a fairly good margin. They had a much better argument: that content is king," Fuld says. "MySpace won the strategy event...whether it will win the war" is unclear. … Read more

Intellicast weather service rolled out a new beta version of its site last week. Users have access to all the usual Internet weather services like local, national, and international forecasts, plus daily summaries with detailed information. For those who are wary to ditch their speedy weather widget to check the forecast, Intellicast employs Ajax for no-loading browsing--making it a fair bit more compelling than the average Internet weather service.

I could go on with boring details about barometric pressure and how the sunrise and sunset icons make me happy, but I'll spare you. You can check out Intellicast beta here.… Read more

Google Maps has made things a little spicier for users who are looking up information on cities like New York, London, and San Francisco: outlines to show the footprints of buildings, and subway stops. Public transportation map mashups have been around for a while--take subway stop site Hopstop, which uses Yahoo Maps, for example--but this is the first time that Google has incorporated that data into its standard map search.

It doesn't look like this has spread to mobile platforms yet: I have Google Maps on my Helio Drift phone (oops, I called it a phone), and it does … Read more

Quizlet is a cool flash card tool that lets you design and use your own study guides for tests, exams, or anything else that needs to be burned into your brain. Quizlet lets you design your own simple questions and answers. After you're done you can quiz yourself onscreen. Quizlet randomizes the questions and keeps track of the ones you miss for retesting. You can also share your quizzes and get in touch with other Quizlet users to discuss changes to the content or tips on how to remember the tough ones.

As a recent college grad, I remember … Read more

There's been a lot of talk about "killers" recently, namely potential YouTube competitor Joost. And for a while, we've known that Wikipedia would soon have a potential rival in Citizendium, a project announced several months ago. But Citizendium's different: founder Larry Sanger isn't aiming to shoot down Wikipedia; in fact, he was one of that site's co-founders. Rather, he's aiming to use Wikipedia's model and existing content to build something that he hopes will be better--and less of a free-for-all. Though anyone can be a Citizendium "author," contributors will … Read more

When new gadgets are announced, it's often weeks if not months before you can see them in person to gauge their size. Sizeasy is a slick and simple piece of Webware that lets you plug in the dimensions of any product and compare it to real-world objects.

What really makes it fun is selecting from a drop-down list of real products to measure your object against, such as a door, a mattress, a box of matches, or a wine bottle. You can include up to five objects for your comparison.

When you're done, you'll receive a link … Read more

Gradefix is a Web-based organizational tool aimed at students who want to organize their schoolwork in a virtual assignment book. Users simply add their assignment info, and Gradefix prioritizes the projects that need their attention. Could this be simpler than a hard-copy day planner? Unfortunately, the answer is no.

Gradefix separates schoolwork into four categories: homework, reading, quiz study, and exam study. Sorely lacking is scheduling for lab work and study groups, two activities that most college students likely would add to their schedules. In that regard, Gradefix seems suited more to the high school crowd.

After adding a new … Read more

Before I start talking about Footnote, a new service that lets users annotate and enrich digital public-domain documents with notes, links, and discussions, I should emphasize that the phrase "history geeks" in the title of this post is not intended to be derogatory in any way. I was a history major in college (history of science, to be more exact) and I'm really excited to explore Footnote, which I read about in a Smart Mobs post by Howard Rheingold. The site has inked a deal with the National Archives to make all 4.5 million of its … Read more