Suffire.com | Geek Stuffs, Technology Related

pimg src=”http://cache.gawker.com/assets/images/valleywag/2008/10/161137092_c610c67b4f.jpg” align=”left” hspace=”4″ vspace=”2″ width=”500″ height=”375″ style=”display:block;float:none;” /Imitation is the sincerest form of getting rich. MySpace got bought early, on the cheap; Facebook has yet to cash out. Michael and Xochi Birch’s sale of Bebo, a social network more popular overseas than in the U.S., to AOL for $850 million has been the best social-network cashout to date. And how did they manage it? Shamelessly copying other sites, Xochi Birch a href=”http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/technology/7685453.stm”admits to the BBC/a./p pRingo, their first social site, was an unabashed copy of Friendster. The husband-and-wife team sold that off to Monster, the job-listings site, for a pittance mdash; but a pittance that provided the seed funding for Bebo, which Xochi openly says was inspired by MySpace. Copy early, copy often, sell out. em(Photo by a href=”http://www.flickr.com/photos/aurenh/161137092/in/set-72157594156732950/”Auren Hoffman/a)/em/p br style=”clear: both;”/
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The much-talked-about talks between Yahoo and Time Warner to unload AOL? They’re definitely on, says a tipster, who also claims Yahoo CEO Jerry Yang and President Sue Decker are in New York trying to cajole Time Warner CEO Jeff Bewkes into a deal before Yahoo announces third-quarter earnings later this month. Any Manhattan stargazers care to keep an eye out for him? Update: In the absence of actual news on Yang’s New York adventures, Kara Swisher has lots and lots and lots of speculation about who will run a merged AOL-Yahoo.

The NTT DoCoMo prototype phone shown in the video above has an embedded DLP projector, presumably using an LED light source in order to project a respectable 20- to 25-in. video image on the wall a few feet away. The downside, as you can hear from the dude asking questions (AOL Switched’s Tom Samiljan if I’m not mistaken) is that the phone is large, or at least small but strapped to a real brick of a projector. I guess we’re supposed to admire the image, and wait for the actual mini-projector technology to catch up. [TechPertPanel - YouTube]

All platforms with Firefox: The WiseStamp beta Firefox add-on edits, saves, and applies rich HTML signatures to your web-based email accounts, including Gmail, Yahoo Mail, Hotmail, and AOL mail. With WiseStamp installed, you get a rich HTML editor that lets you create signatures with links, colors, images, and formatting, plus links to your favorite social network profiles. You can make more than one signature, too—like personal and business. Once you’re in your webmail account, WiseStamp adds a signature drop-down so you can choose which sig to use with the current email, or it can insert it automatically. Take a look at some screenshots of WiseStamp in action.

Launch WiseStamp’s preferences pane to start creating your signatures.

By default WiseStamp includes a small WiseStamp advertisement at the bottom of your signature. You can disable that, as well as the “Contact Me” text in the settings area.

Here’s what the WiseStamp signature I made looks like in Gmail:

Judging from the demand for HTML signatures in Gmail, looks like WiseStamp will make quite a few people happy. Our most-wanted feature for WiseStamp? Syncing signatures across computers. WiseStamp is a free download, works with and wherever Firefox does.

Marc Andreessen has been invited to join the board at eBay. The online auction company has been struggling of late, never mind CEO John Donahoe’s assertion that what’s bad for the American economy is good for eBay. Andreessen, probably smelling the stink blowing in from the rising tide, stockpiled enough venture capital to last Ning through a “nuclear winter.” Proving his acumen at swindling investors if nothing else — and he does know how to keep employees overworked between stints at eager, young startups like Netscape and Ning and layoff-happy AOL. [San Jose Mercury News]

The fantasy that someone will buy AOL from Time Warner in a complicated deal is getting even AOL CEO Randy Falco hot and bothered. A tipster told Silicon Alley Insider that Falco recently fumed, “When is New York going to sell us?” And to whom? “Sources close to AOL” told VentureBeat’s Matt Marshall that Microsoft plans to aquire both Yahoo and AOL after those companies merge. We planned to give you a 100-word version of Marshall’s story, but seven paragraphs in, we realized it made no sense.

Here’s our theory: Some executives at Time Warner bent Marshall’s ear in an effort to drive up AOL’s price. Or rather, prop it up. Recent reports suggest Yahoo wants to pay $5 billion for all of AOL, only months after deal chatter put the price more in the $10 billion range. When Google bought its 5 percent stake in AOL in 2005, it valued the company at $20 billion.

Every time AOL comes up for sale, the price drops. When Yahoo-AOL merger talks began last spring, the tentative plan was to combine Yahoo and AOL and give Time Warner $10 billion worth of stock in the new company. Since then, Yahoo has weathered both Microsoft and Carl Icahn, and AOL’s advertising business — the only reason why anyone would buy it — has stalled. So while merger talks continue, Yahoo now only wants to hand over $5 billion or so in stock, reports BoomTown’s Kara Swisher. One reason why the deal might actually happen?

When Yahoo’s leadership first broached the idea of a merger with AOL, executives in Sunnyvale balked. But a lot of those Yahoos are gone now. Sources told Swisher that the consensus is that a merger would replenish Yahoo’s executive roster and “bolster its ad business, international portfolio and email and content offerings.” Which is all true, I’m sure. But instead of spending $5 billion or more on a dying brand no one remembers why they use, why doesn’t Jerry Yang just buy VH1′s I Love the ’90s? That seems easier.

Revolution Health, the brainchild of AOL founder Steve Case, is still in talks to sell its health portal to a rival, Everyday Health. The combination would have bested WebMD, the No. 1 health-site operator — until WebMD bought QualityHealth.com today. The Revolution-Everyday deal, meanwhile, could happen within a week — but is currently stuck on financing. Arranging the money to consummate the sale is proving difficult, with Wall Street more concerned with its own survival than the health of Case’s startup venture. One way or another, it seems all but certain that Case’s Revolution Healthwill end up sold, without much transformation to show for his troubles.

Case’s quest to transform the healthcare industry has tragically earnest roots; he started the effort after his brother, Dan, died of brain cancer. Hospital bureaucracy always frustrates the patient’s kin — but suffering does not always lead to wisdom. Dan, a tech investment banker, might have cautioned Case against this plan.

Revolution Health has ended up as a mere information middleman, buying ads on Google and then selling the users who click on them to other advertisers. That’s why it inevitably needs to sell; online advertising is a game of volume. With Google eager to bulk up its own health efforts, it’s not clear how much longer there will be room for third parties to play. And arbitrage is hardly a revolutionary exercise.

Someone needs to fix the healthcare system. Case’s story is suitably tragic; his motivation, noble. But he’s not the man for the job.