This week in the Google and Apple News Korner SFist Tech Roundup: the same old familiar faces are giving money to each other and making life easier for you, the users of the internets.
Google bought stock in AOL, after the latter turned down possible deals with Microsoft, and earlier Yahoo and Comcast. Google also made additions to its services by adding GMail access from mobile phones, and music search and purchasing options to its search engine. And to further the Web 2.0 Brave New World angle, the company released the Google Homepage API to allow developers to create personalized home page content using Google apps.
Other corporate deals and partnerships: Yahoo announced a partnership with Six Apart, the makers of MovableType, to make a customized version of that blogging engine available to Yahoo users. Microsoft and MTV announced a partnership in the new Urge music download service, aimed to be a competitor for the iTunes Music Store and Napster.
And in a move of solidarity for future generations of the internets, Google, Microsoft, and Sun joined to sponsor the new RAD Lab at Berkeley, intended to be a greenhouse for new Web-based software projects.
Follow-ups to earlier mentions, after the jump
There was more follow-up to the Wikipedia controversy, as a researcher tracked down the anonymous culprit who wrote the bogus article. Although the whole thing was intended as a harmless prank, the resolution didn't bode too well for the encyclopedia's reliability, because the prankster thought Wikipedia was just a joke website (presumably like Uncyclopedia, but funny). Nature tried to help soften the blow by releasing a study showing the encylopedia's entries were almost as accurate as The Encyclopaedia Britannica's. But the power of collaborative content took over, as the site was soon hit with a deluge of vandalism and prank articles.
Also in public-perception damage control news: videogames. The New York Times ran a story (here via CNet) about ex-Electronic Arts president
John Riccitiello's joining Silicon Valley-based venture capital firm Elevation Partners. They've made big investments in LA's Pandemic Studios and Edmonton's BioWare (two studios who've had high-profile dealings with local publisher LucasArts).
The new money will be useful, since videogames aren't apparently eligible for any NEA grants. We mentioned the "videogames as art" hoopla generated by a negative comment in film critic Roger Ebert's column; since then, Ebert's site has posted not one, not two, but three columns responding to the deluge of angry e-mail and message board posts. The "It's popular and profitable, but is it art?" debate rages on, but one thing is clear: don't piss off a bunch of shut-ins with internet connections. We look out for our own.
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