Some tech geeks might appreciate iSendOut’s newest effort - the video business card, which allows consumers to create video business cards to send out over the internet for no charge. With just a webcam, camcorder, or uploaded video, you can create your own video business card.

iSendOut touts that:

“The list of uses for the Video Business Card are quite limitless,” said Paul Vizard, president of iSendOut.com. “Use this system for valentines, birthdays, job applications, sales videos auditions, or company announcements. Those who make use of this technology set themselves apart from the regular message crowd.”

Okay, so this doesn’t look like it would be a practical replacement for real business cards, or business card holders & cases, but it could potentially be a nice enhancement for those who take extra care to make a nice video business card.

Personally, I am going to stick with real business cards. I haven’t really gotten into the video blog craze, and I don’t see myself getting into video business cards. I don’t see the practicality of it either. What do you guys think about this?

MySpace is currently developing a new digital download store for music which will be called “Mypurchase”. Visitors to the site will be able to purchase music offered by bands, and will be able to play the downloaded songs on such devices as the iPod, Zune, and others. MySpace is partnering with SnoCap, an online music distribution service, to add the new feature to the site.

The service has the potential to sell mass quantities of music, due to the site’s huge audience, however, artists still have some reservations. They are primarily concerned about the unknown profit margin that will be charged for distributing the songs, as well as the artistic implications that selling music one song at a time (instead of as an entire album) will have. Bands are also worried that it could help to quicken the death of CDs, making them become obsolete eventually.

MySpace is popular not only amongst the younger generation, but it is also a launch pad for bands. Many up and coming bands are on MySpace, and a number have seen a great deal of success due to the site.

Kevin Poulsen, current Wired editor and former hacker, explains in a recent Wired article how using 1000 lines of code over several Perl scripts he was able to find an astonishing 744 sex offenders on MySpace. 497 MySpace users are found to have committed sex crimes against children, and six of these are considered to be repeat offenders. At least 243 of the 497 have had convictions after the year 2000.

So just how was he able to do this? In May he began an automated search of MySpace members for 385,932 registered sex offenders from 46 states, which were taken from the Department of Justice’s National Sex Offender Registry website. Searches were conducted by first and last names, as well as limiting results to a five mile radius of the sex offender’s registered zip code.

As one might expect, the automated search turned up a number of false results, as well as those that were unverifiable. Poulsen then took it upon himself to manually sort through the results, often comparing photographs, ages, and other data that could help to identify them.

The result of this little experiment is the confirmation of what many parents have feared for some time; that MySpace is the perfect place for sexual offenders and perverts to prey upon innocent and naive children. But, it has also resulted in the at least one police apprehension of a suspected sex offender - Andrew Lubrano, 39, of Suffolk County, New York - who has had four sex crime convictions in the past 20 years.

Poulsen has also decided to make the code he used to conduct this research available to the general public, and it can be downloaded from here. Poulsen has stated that anyone is free to tinker with the code, improve it, and discuss the methodology used.

Today Google and Fox Interactive Media announced a multi-year agreement, calling for Google to provide search service and advertising across Fox’s growing online network, including MySpace.

In accordance with the terms of the agreement, Google will be the sole provider of search services and contextually target advertising on MySpace.  With over 99 million members, this represents not only a huge influx of cash for Google, but also the opportunity to put its product and brand in front of a large audience.

On the heels of the annoucement, Google’s stock rose from $371.50 per share up to $377.95 at market close.  That represents a 1.1% increase.  In after hours trading, the stock rose even more, up to $381.84, up another 1.03%.  Look for this one to fly to $400 in the near future.

Could this new deal be the beginning of GoogleSpace, the biggest cash cow to hit the net?

 

Today I was reading the Wall Street Journal, the actual print version, not the online version. Anyways, in the Marketplace section there’s an interesting article about a patent that Friendster was awarded last month.

The patent they were awarded is related to searching for people online based on their relationships, and they are expecting another patent to come through soon as well. This could mean potentially big problems for other popular social networking sites like MySpace, Facebook, Orkut, and a host of other smaller start-ups.

Friendster executives are now weighing their options. They could either sue their rivals, make them pay patent-licensing fees, or just not take any legal action at all.

With Friendster falling out of favor to main competitors MySpace and Facebook, taking legal action, whether sueing their competition, or forcing them to pay licensing fees, Friendster could potentially make up for some of their recent losses.

On the other hand, however, Friendster may not have a solid case. Their patents will be scrutinized, and it would need to be determined whether their patents cover fundamental inventions or features that competitors could easily avoid using. If others can prove that their activities don’t infringe on Friendster’s claims or can prove that similiar technology existed that precedes Friendster, Friendster may not have a leg to stand on.

In the midst of their declining growth, Friendster is trying to reinvent themselves as a mature, grown-up service featuring mainly adults in their 20s to 30s, instead of the teen audience of MySpace, and college audience of Facebook.

Friendster was one of the first, if not the first, social networking sites of its kind. I’m not sure what that means in relation to their patents, but it will certainly be interesting to see how this all plays out.

With more and more of the younger generation spending their time on computers and less time in the traditional young adult hang-out spots, the military decided that it was time to modernize their recruiting tactics and market themselves and their causes in the online world. 

As if staking out high school lunchrooms, hanging out at malls, and calling students at home wasn’t enough - you can now find the Marines on MySpace.   Their profile has been up for about five months, and remarkably it seems to be going over well there.  The Marines are hunting down new “friends” and being added to others’ friends lists just like they are “one of the gang”.

The Air Force advertises on MySpace, but does not have a profile page, and the Navy has no presence on the site at this point in time.  The Army’s profile page is apparently being worked on now by its ad agency, and according to military personnel, it should be up soon.

The MySpace effort on the part of the Marines (and soon the Army) is a part of the millitary’s broader effort to use the Internet to find new recruits. Since the launch of the profile, they have gained over 12,000 “friends, and report that 430 have gone to their site and signed up to be recruited. Simply recruiting online, however, is only just the beginning. Don’t think that they’ve stopped at MySpace. 

Their efforts also entail spending $1 million a year on banners and profiles linked on popular sites like sportingnews.com and gamespot.com.  They hope that this will drive more traffic to their websites, and in turn, help gain more recruits.

And now, it has been revealed that the military is using our hard-earned tax dollars to fund military personnel surfing the net.  Just what do these net-surfing millitary folks do?  Well, apparently they are fond of leaving blog comment spam, and infiltrate popular web forums and online discussions.  Allegedly, they have a special affinity for politically and militarily inclined discussions.  The purpose of these efforts is again to drive people to their website, showcase the efforts of the military, and to correct people from sharing so-called incorrect information. 

They also work with about 250 bloggers to disseminate “news about the good work being done by U.S. forces in the global war on terror.”  Through this, they are reaching a total target audience of around 17 million people.

Don’t believe me?  Check out the U.S. Department of Defense website where they openly talk about their online blog efforts.

Welcome to the 21st Century.