Miley Cyrus Quits Twitter, World Ends

In what's certain to become the most devastating news your 8-year-old daughter has heard in her short life, Miley Cyrus has ... gasp! ... quit Twitter. Or something. Details on the pop star's last-minute ditch are scarce, but celebrity blogs are scrambling to fill in the blanks, seating most of the blame with Cyrus' male love interest. Cyrus was considered prolific and "interesting" among the Twitter crowd, and heartbroken fans - in between bouts of hysterical sobbing and hair-tugging desperation - have created a very special tag: #mileycomeback.

Like many tweets, Kutcher's contributions to the hiss of Internet white noise barely provoke a quasi-interested "huh." Is that supposed to be funny? Not surprisingly, it's trending well today on Twitter, and is, quite possibly, the most exciting news of 2009. To add to the death knell, here are five other loudmouthed celebrities who should consider taking a page from Cyrus' book: Ashton Kutcher Kutcher, the world's most popular Twitter dude, has nothing to say. Is he supposed to be funny? Glenn Beck Picking Beck out of a lineup betrays my political sensibilities, I fear, but seriously, this guy is a ridiculous blowhard. Hard to tell.

Never before in my life have I craved the warm embrace of deafness, but as soon as Beck opens his mouth or puts fingers to keyboard, I most certainly do. The Fans of Twilight feed is a bunch of gushing teenybops clinging to waifs of plot and characterization as though Stephenie Meyer had rewritten the Bible replete with more emo-posturing and vampire sex. Fans of Twilight Lord, I can't wait until this movie series is over. A brief glimpse of this feed's obsessive "insight" into the Twilight series is enough to make you slap on some eyeliner and hate your tyrannical father. Cuban, one of PC World's honorary blowhards, blabs with regularity about aspects of fancy livin' you'll never touch.

Mark Cuban Rich people are awesome, especially when they pontificate about how rich they are. Money, sports, tech, all communicated in hyper-masculine bravado, all pretty much extraneous. This guy is annoying. Ryan Seacrest Is there really anything else to add? And everywhere.

I was going to add professional train wreck Courtney Love to the list, but apparently her Twitter account has been shut down. It's awful. Perhaps it has something to do with her libelous, nearly indecipherable rants. First, there are psychotics out there, hell-bent on destroying reputations with misbegotten words. Besides the love of a hot young man, there are multiple reasons why a celebrity would quit using a social networking service like Twitter.

That is why Twitter introduced Verified Accounts - so you know the brainless celeb you're reading is actually, wow, that dumb, and not some jerk pretending to wear famous pants. There are only so many 140-character blasts of nothing one can endure before the walls of one's cranium begin to bleed ennui. Then there exists the risk of overexposure and jumping the shark. Whatever Cyrus' reasoning may be, Twitter will certainly never be the same again, and by "never" I mean we'll forget about this in 20 or so minutes.

iStockphoto guarantees its collection

Starting today, iStockphoto, the micropayment royalty-free image, video, and audio provider, will legally guarantee its entire collection from copyright, moral right, trademark, intellectual property, and rights of privacy disputes for up to $10,000. The new iStock Legal Guarantee, delivered at no cost to customers, covers the company's entire 5 million-plus collection. Recently however, Vivozoom, another microstock company, took a similar action to guarantee its collection. Additional coverage for an Extended Legal Guarantee totaling $250,000 is available for the purchase of 100 iStock credits. "Our first line of defense has always been-and continues to be-our rigorous inspection process," said Kelly Thompson, chief operating officer of iStockphoto. "The Legal Guarantee is simply an added layer of protection for our customers, many of whom are using microstock more than ever before." Although common for traditional stock houses, such legal guarantees have not been standard in microstock because of the low prices.

iStock says that files purchased and used in accordance with its license will not breach any trademark, copyright, or other intellectual property rights or rights of privacy. And, if a customer does get a claim, iStock will cover the customer's legal costs and direct damages up to a combined total of $10,000. iStock customers can increase their coverage for legal fees and direct damages up to a combined total of $250,000 by purchasing the Extended Legal Guarantee via the iStock credits (which costs between $95 and $138). iStock expects that this program will be popular with a very small percentage of sophisticated media buyers with very specific needs, and considers it to be a value-added service to customers rather than a major source of revenue.

Mac News Briefs: Major update for Workgroups suite

A Document Organizer and browser-based proofing tool highlight the changes in Workgroups 2010. MetaCommunications announced the updated version of its productivity management software suite for marketing, creating design, packaging, and prepress workgroups on Wednesday. The browser-based document proofer includes markup tools for annotating PDF documents and image files. The Document Organizer lets users drag-and-drop digital media-including files, e-mails, scanned documents, and attachments-into Workgroups 2010. The system will automatically copy or move that media to the correct location on the file server. In conjunction with the new version of Workgroups, MetaCommunications launched a community Web site called Developer Center, aimed at letting Workgroups developers, administrators, and users interact with each other and share forms, solutions, and code snippets.

The $99 USB barcode scanner and attendant software collects information on media such as books and movies. The desktop version of Workgroups runs on Snow Leopard in addition to the Tiger and Leopard versions of Mac OS X. Complete multi-user suite bundles start at $4,995 with individual modules starting at $1,695; MetaCommunications has more detailed information about pricing on its Web site.-Philip Michaels IntelliScanner adds $99 organizational tool to lineup IntelliScanner announced on Wednesday added a sub-$100 product to its lineup of scanner-based organizational tools with the release of IntelliScanner Classic. The scanner reads the retail barcode and automatically identifies the items, importing data about them from online databases. The $99 product requires Mac OS X 10.4 or later and a USB port. The included media organization software lets you organize your media, create bookmarks, keep track of lending, and generate insurance reports.

A special $79 price is available to qualified teachers and students.-Dan Moren Carbon Copy Cloner works with Snow Leopard's HFS+ Carbon Copy Cloner 3.3, the latest version of Bombich Software's disk cloning utility, was released on Wednesday, adding Snow Leopard-specific improvements as well as a variety of other enhancements and bug fixes. In addition, the software improves the performance of backing up large numbers of files with extended attributes, properly excludes filesystem indexes such as those created by Spotlight, and fixes a number of bugs, such as now excluding the Time Machine database when backing up a hard drive. The new version works with Snow Leopard's HFS+ filesystem compression and also now reports disk size using base 10 values for MB and GB, reflecting Snow Leopard's change. Carbon Copy Cloner 3.3 is a free download, but a donation is request. TeamViewer Mac 4.1.6717 includes full instant messaging capabilities with anyone in a user's partner list. The software requires Mac OS X 10.4 or higher, including Mac OS X Snow Leopard.-DM TeamViewer adds instant messaging for Mac users TeamViewer has updated its remote access and support application, adding instant messaging functions for Mac users.

In addition, the updated version of TeamViewer allows a Custom QuickSupport module to be created for Mac OS X users. The application is free for non-commercial, personal use, with other pricing options available for business, premium, and corporate users.-PM TeamViewer provides remote access over the Internet.

Start-up unveils storage platform for large-scale Web applications

A storage company emerged from stealth mode this week with software designed to efficiently manage the file serving needs of Internet applications such as social networks, online ad serving and software-as-a-service.  Nine data storage companies to watch MaxiScale announced the Flex Software Platform, which is installed on commodity gear, such as a bank of Apache Web servers. Retrieving a small file with the MaxiScale system requires just one I/O operation, a feature that eliminates bottlenecks caused by systems that require multiple I/O operations for each small file retrieval, says IDC storage analyst Noemi Greyzdorf. "They built a very interesting file system that handles small files – files that are one megabyte or smaller – incredibly efficiently," Greyzdorf says Configurations start with as few as four nodes but can scale up to 50,000 servers, the company says. The goal is to improve performance and reduce cost, space and power requirements for Web companies that have to deal with large numbers of small files. "We think people deploying Web applications have been paying too much money and we're out to change that," says Gary Orenstein, vice president of marketing for MaxiScale.

Instead of using expensive storage boxes with interconnects like InfiniBand or Fibre Channel, MaxiScale recommends using Flex with 2TB SATA drives and says the Flex system relies on IP and Ethernet connections. "We're using standards-based, commodity hardware for everything," Orenstein says. Maxiscale's first publicly named customer is AdMob, a mobile advertising marketplace that has served more than 110 billion ad impressions in the last three years. Flex uses a patent-pending Peer Set architecture that replicates file data and metadata across SATA drives, allowing for load balancing and resiliency to multiple hardware failures. Based in Sunnyvale, Calif., and founded in 2007, MaxiScale has $17 million in venture financing from investors NEA, El Dorado Ventures and Silicon Valley Bank. Flex software is available now and pricing starts at $6,000 for four nodes allowing up to 32TB of storage. MaxiScale was co-founded by CEO Gianluca Rattazzi, who previously founded Meridian Data, Parallan, P-Com and BlueArc; and CTO Francesco Lacapra, who previously held executive roles at Olivetti, Quantum and BlueArc.

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Adobe to buy Omniture for US$1.8 billion

Adobe has agreed to buy Web analytics company Omniture for US$1.8 billion in cash, the companies said Tuesday. On a conference call Thursday, executives wouldn't say if there was a bidding war with other companies to buy Omniture. The price San Jose, California-based Adobe is paying for the company, which is $21.50 per share, is at a 45 percent premium over Omniture's average closing price for the last 30 trading days, Adobe said. Adobe, known for multimedia design, Web-development and document-creation software such as Flash, Dreamweaver and Acrobat, said the purchase will help the company add Web analytics and optimization capabilities directly to those products.

He said a recent Forrester study found that 73 percent of companies doing business on the Web had some kind of analytics technology in place. "It's a ubiquitous technology that is in high demand at companies that are placing any parts of their business online," he said. This kind of ability to measure what kinds of media, Web applications or Web pages are popular with users is becoming essential as more and more business is being done on the Web, particularly in the area of online advertising, said Forrester senior analyst John Lovett. For designers, developers and online marketers using its tools, this new capability will help them streamline how they create and deliver relevant content and applications, Adobe said. On a conference call Tuesday, Adobe CEO and President Shantanu Narayen said that the idea for a merger grew out of conversations with Omniture's CEO, Josh James, and with customers who wanted more out of the digital media they were creating using Adobe's products. Advertisers, advertising agencies, publishers and online retailers can improve the experience of their end users and get more out of their digital media through the new analytical capability, the company said. For example, Narayen said people were using Flash to create online advertisements, but wanted a way to better understand click-through rates so they could see which ones were working.

Similarly, Adobe, too, found it wanted more information from the ads and digital media it was putting up on its own site. They thought there might be a way for Adobe to build that into their products, and "a number actually wanted us to integrate with solutions like Omniture," he said. Omniture had been an Adobe partner for some time, and in conversations with James, Narayen said the two realized their companies had "the same vision" for how digital media and rich Internet applications could include Web analytics and optimization technology. The deal creates a "big opportunity" to allow content creators to potentially measure the impact of everything they do, Lovett added. Forrester's Lovett said the deal will put Adobe a step ahead of other companies creating tools for developing digital content. "The combination of these two technologies makes sense - it's the creative meeting the measurement side of things," he said. Following the close of the deal, Omniture will become a new unit within Adobe, the company said.

The companies expect the deal to close in the fourth quarter of Adobe's fiscal year, which ends Nov. 27. Omniture's CEO James will join Adobe as senior vice president in charge of that business unit, reporting to Adobe President and CEO Shantanu Narayen.