PDA's newsbucket

Fox hunts for online ad model Murdoch's Fox Interactive is planning its own online advertising network to sell across all News Corp online properties. Called Fox Interactive Media Service (FIM Serve) it's based on the ad-serving system behind MySpace. With the recent Google/Doubleclick, Microsoft/aQuantive, Yahoo/Right Media and AOL/Adtech deals, News Corp has finally spotted where everyone else is going with online ads. Google, of course, will continue to serve as MySpace's search partner (let's not forget that the boys from Mountain View paid hundreds of millions of dollars for that privilege). All this from the Reuters Media Summit in New York. Source: Reuters. Double the MySpace Fox Interactive Media president Peter Levinsohn also used the summit to talk about plans to improve MySpace which suggest that an acquisition of LinkedIn - as recently speculated - might not be necessary. MySpace users will be able to create 'multiple personalities' so that the digitally schizophrenic can have one profile for mates, one for acquaintances and one for business contacts. It would avoid the Facebook problem of your boss being able to see what you got up to at the weekend because you once added them as a friend (learn people: make more use of your limited profile). Source: Read/Write Web. GWhizz Google's GDrive looks to be on the slipway, according to the Wall Street Journal. The service would act like a virtual hard drive giving a user access to files from any internet-connected computer in the world and could be rolled out early next year. Source: ZDNet. Down the tube Emma Clarke, the voice of the London Underground, today became the web's hottest property after she was sacked as an announcer for telling a reporter that the tube service is "dreadful" (sacked for telling the truth then?). Her website collapsed within hours of the news breaking as people downloaded the humorous MP3 files she has produced. Personal favourite? "Here we are crammed into another sweaty Tube carriage ... If you're a female smile at the bloke next to you and make his day. He's probably not had sex for months." Should she get it up and running again it's here. Apple's apps Apple's marketing guy Greg Joswiak, who is tasked with the 'job' of marketing the iPod and iPhone (so not that taxing then) talks to Fortune. Valleywag maintains that the interview confirms its hypothesis that when third party iPhone apps get launched they will be sold through iTunes (can anyone at Cupertino spell monopoly?) but the actual text does not seem to make it so explicit - the closest Joswiak comes is "...one of the things we want to do, again, is create a development environment that is going to maintain the security and reliability of the iPhone yet at the same time offer developers some really cool things that we can do." He does say, however, that all apps will have to have a digital signature so they can be tracked back to source. Source: Fortune, Valleywag. Harvard reclaims its prodigal son And finally, he may have dropped out but that's no reason for Harvard's alumni mag not to produce a mammoth piece about the man behind Facebook, Mark Zuckerberg. Source: 02138 magazine.