Sounds like Adobe and Yahoo are getting together on a plan to include ads in Adobe PDF documents.  Are you serious?  As if I needed another reason to be annoyed by Adobe’s reader… long load times, countless frustrations with digital rights management procedures… I’m not saying they won’t make any money from it, and this is just my initial reaction without knowing all of the details, but at least give me something in return: additional features, exclusive content, something to justify interrupting my document reading experience.
If you have a Mac, you probably love to use Preview, which opens in a snap and is a great viewer for PDF’s, JPG’s and more.  If you don’t, you might want to look into Foxit…

Yup, with the exception of a few posts from >play 2007 panelists, all DMEC blog posts are written by Berkeley graduate students.  With tremendous support from the Haas administration, DMEC is entirely student-driven (and includes graduate students outside of Haas).

We welcome messages from readers (but not PR people who subscribe to the shotgun approach).  If you’re reading this on our site, the DMEC email address can be found on your right (my left).

I saw the following at the end of a Google Groups email:

…

Regards,

_name_

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Never miss a thing. Make Yahoo your homepage.
–~–~———~–~—-~————~——-~–~—-~

You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups “_group name_” group.
To post to this group, send email to _group abbreviation_@googlegroups.com
To unsubscribe from this group, send email to _group abbreviation_-unsubscribe@googlegroups.com
For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/_group abbreviation_?hl=en
-~———-~—-~—-~—-~——~—-~——~–~—

The contrast between the information shown above from Yahoo! and Google reminds me of one of the main reasons I stopped using Yahoo! Mail altogether: I don’t like serving as a billboard. Others have felt similarly for many years now. The message from Yahoo!, appended to the sender’s email because she uses Yahoo! Mail, is irrelevant to most recipients. Most web surfers are well aware of what yahoo.com has to offer. If they wanted to set it as their homepage, they would have long ago. In contrast, the message from Google contains information relevant to many recipients of the email (albeit probably more information than needed by most).

I realize I’m comparing email appendages to mailing list appendages. In the case of email, Google does not advertise to recipients at all. Don’t even get me started on the corruption of messages from Yahoo! Groups…

I’m curious: has Yahoo! reevaluated the decision to append advertisements to their members’ emails, or has improving existing services been lost in the (literal) shuffle? (I hope I get called out.) Has Yahoo! decided their target market doesn’t mind having the Yahoo! brand clutter up their email conversations and they’re willing to pass on people who care? Granted, maintaining an email platform may be a secondary concern as communication shifts to authenticated mediums like IM and other social networking tools.

I attended a meet-up today on the Open Media Web during which the presenter from Creative Commons commented on the irrelevance of whether record labels stay in business. Time will tell how many musicians will manage to make a living from music as a primary source of income, but, with the unlimited shelf space of the internet and the draw to making music, it seems certain there will be no shortage of music for us to enjoy.

As the WGA strike carries on, does the same logic apply to Hollywood? There’s certainly an abundance of video on the web. As the industry loses “share of attention” (and revenues) to web video, where does independent film-making fit into all this? Does a union still serve a purpose? Seeing as any video can find its way onto the unlimited shelf space of the internet (and our mail from Netflix), can working with producers willing to fairly compensate writers provide an attractive alternative to union bargaining with studios? (Despite the career benefits of striking reported on by Marketplace: the opportunity for less-established writers to network.)

For a humorous take, I enjoyed this inside report on the negotiations between screen writers and studios (as well as the text at the very bottom of that blogger’s site). My favorite line: “Bunch of smelly hippies, stealing our intellectual property is what the Internet is.”

(Some back and forth on Derek Powazek’s blog got me thinking about this.)

Over the weekend Google released this video, featuring none other than man of the year Sergey Brin, which introduces the public to the Android Mobile Software platform.

Not only that, but Google also announced a $10M fund to give the best Android developers cash prizes for releasing the best applications for the platform. Now is about the time I wished I knew how to code…