By Gilbert Falso :: 4:24 PM
Xanga, one of the original blogging and journal websites that launched in the late 90s, is facing a shutdown in July, unless it can cobble together about $60,000 from an online fundraiser it has established.
Facing an expiring lease on its networking facility, Xanga co-founder John Hiler outlined a plan to save the site and its content, from being turned off at the end of the lease. Hiler plans to migrate the Xanga backend to a Word-Press compatible structure, and hopes to keep the Xanga community intact when this happens.
By raising the funds and through the donation of Hiler’s time, he hopes to, “find a way to port Xanga to open source blogging software like WordPress, and reinvent the site together with the community.”
The $60,000 influx of cash would help to cover the setup costs for new hardware at a new hosting facility, pay for programmers to get the new site up and running, and cover day-to-day site costs for a time.
Fundraising for a new Xanga is taking the place of memberships in the new site. For a $48 donation, users will receive a year-long membership for blogging on the new site. Since the new site will be completely paid, “we wouldn’t have any ads on the blogs,” said Hiler.
With a paid model, Hiler says users would see the following features: custom themes, plugins, group blogging capabilities, threaded comments, and spam and moderation controls.
Xanga needs to reach its fundraising goal by July 15. If the goal is met, the site will transition over to the new platform. If not, Xanga will shut down on that date. They are currently contacting customers to let them know that they will need to back up and download their content before July 15, in case the fundraising goal isn’t met.
By Gilbert Falso :: 5:08 PM
The ink isn’t even dry on Yahoo’s purchase contract for Tumblr, and already changes are afoot at the blogging site. Today, Tumblr announced the addition of advertising posts that will appear on user dashboards. On Tumblr, the dashboard is what a user sees when they log into the service – it displays the blog posts of all of the Tumblr blogs that they are currently subscribed to.
About a month ago, Tumblr inserted advertisements into its native mobile apps, and the advertisements coming to the web-based dashboard will work in a similar fashion.
Tumblr is calling the ads “sponsored web posts” and will include content from the following partners at launch: AT&T, Capital One, Denny’s, Ford Motor Company, Purina, Universal Pictures, and Viacom. Like traditional Tumblr posts, users will have the ability to take standard actions with the ads, such as reblogging them, liking the brand, following, or sharing the ads. Paid ads will be noted on the site with a dollar sign graphic.
“The engagement rates on the Tumblr Radar and Sponsored Mobile Posts have been spectacular and we have taken this same carefully architected approach to this new web in-dash opportunity,†explained Tumblr’s Lee Brown, Global Head of Sales for the company.
Tumblr has designed the advertising units so that users should see only four sponsored posts on their dashboard per day.
By Paul Thomson :: 12:13 PM
Another nail in the coffin for traditional journalism outlets? Reports bounced around Twitter earlier this morning that the Chicago Sun-Times has downsized their entire photo department, laying off all staff, effective immediately.
A few minutes ago, the paper confirmed that nearly 20 full-time employees received their notice this morning. The paper released the following statement about the layoffs: “The Chicago Sun-Times continues to evolve with our digitally savvy customers, and as a result, we have had to restructure the way we manage multimedia, including photography, across the network.”
Chicago-based writer Erika Grotto has been Tweeting much of the news, and says that in addition to photographers, the layoffs also extended to photo editors at the paper. Reports claim that photography duties will now be handled by freelancers and reporters armed with their own cameras and phones.
By Cynthia Herbert :: 11:49 PM
Elon Musk, CEO of electric automaker Tesla Motors, said this evening that the company plans to triple the number of its supercharger stations across the U.S. by the end of this year.
Tesla’s electric autos have done well in metropolitan areas in California and New York because of the availability of charging stations to replenish the cars’ batteries. The supercharger technology that Tesla has pioneered sharply cuts the amount of time it takes to fully charge one of its vehicles.
The company hopes that its planned supercharging station coverage will allow Tesla owners to make a drive from coast to coast without worrying about how to quickly charge their cars.
Musk make the announcement in an impromptu way, during remarks on stage at the D11 Conference. Tesla Motors had originally planned to reveal the news at an event on Thursday. A map will be provided tomorrow to show the location of supercharging stations that the company plans to place around the U.S.
In addition to the superchargers, Tesla’s cars will be upgraded to make use of information about the location of the chargers. On-board GPS-equipped navigation computers will help route drivers to their destination, calculate the need for recharging, and direct them to supercharging stations as needed on their trip.
By Cynthia Herbert :: 5:14 PM
Google’s cloud-based e-mail service, Gmail, is adding some new features for message sorting and organization.
Gmail will now offer users the ability to funnel their messages into five different inbox categories, or tabs. The tabs include the primary inbox where most messages are routed, a Social category for e-mail and notifications from Twitter, Facebook, Foursquare, etc., a Promotions category for e-mail from businesses and vendors, an Updates category, for e-mail related to deadline-driven events, like airline flights and reservations, and a Forum category for aggregating e-mail from online discussion boards and listservs.
Users will be able to customize their new inbox, including which of the five tabs (or none) that they want to display. Mail will be able to be dragged-and-dropped from one tab to another, and users can set up their preferences so that mail from a particular sender always is routed to a certain tab.
The changes will be rolled out gradually to the desktop/web version of Gmail first, and then to mobile clients on both the Android and iOS operating systems.