Odeo now under Obvious Corp’s wing
Obvious Corp? Curious name for a company, but this is Web 2.0, right?–At least it’s not Obviousr. Obvious Corp is a brand new company founded by Blogger creator Evan Williams and his Odeo co-founder Biz Stone. As its opening move, Obvious Corp has acquired Odeo, Inc.’s assets including Odeo and Twitter. Williams explains the move in his blog, saying, “I believe there is a lot of value in what we’ve built-both Odeo and Twitter-but I did not believe the structure was going to lead to the kind of success we wanted. In the new company, with a new structure, and a new model, I think they are great investments.” He also describes how Obvious will be doing things differently than the Web 2.0 status quo, and the Obvious web site makes clear that it will be launching new products in the future, but “not until we get our current projects on the right path and also find the right people.” Having been a fan of Williams since his Blogger days, I wish him lots of success with his new venture, and look forward to seeing what Obvious Corp creates.
Posticky is not unlike the many, many personal home page sites where you can cover your browser windowfull of real estate with little widgets, except that Posticky only has one widget: the humble sticky note. Since many of said personal home pages provide sticky note functionality, the reasons for choosing Posticky aren’t overwhelmingly numerous, but it does have a few compelling features. Most interesting is its mobile capabilities: From Posticky’s web interface you can send notes to your phone, or by sending a text message or e-mail to note@posticky.com you can create a new note. There’s also a mobile interface that lets you create and read notes from your web-enabled phone, and Posticky also has a reminder function that lets you make a note into a SMS or e-mail reminder. Unfortunately, Posticky is still in alpha and a bit buggy in Firefox 1.5, and given the competition it’s unclear whether it will be able to carve a niche for itself, but, as always, I’m sure someone will find it useful.
It’s been a bit quiet on the new
Who listens to enough podcasts to name the top ten
Although I tend to use iTunes for podcasts, I do know Odeo is a wonderful thing, and much more open in general. I don’t know how you could get more closed than iTunes, really, though Odeo plays nice with iTunes anyhow. Now Odeo does it again with a slew of new features. One is the ability for a contact to send a podcast straight to you. But the big thing is you can also record in the browser-based Odeo Studio, or do it over the phone. Odeo Studio had been limited to a few users, and now it’s open to all. Once recorded, your audio is pushed up to a page that you can then edit and share. Still no web services API, but they’re working on it, and say it will eventually be available. Check out the custom front page, recording, and more at Odeo, and get in on the action. 
Given that iPodder has fallen before Apple’s lawyers and changed its name to Juice, it seemed inevitable that iPodderX would be next in line at the public records office to file for a name change. Sure enough, Thunderstone Media, which makes iPodderX, has announced that it’s time to find a new identity. And the company is enlisting the public to help. Send in your suggested names, and you can win prizes, including an iPod shuffle, nano and full-size iPod with video —along with (presumably) the glory of helping Thunderstone comply with a cease and desist. You can enter as many times as you want, and there’s really just one rule you need to know about: the new name can’t have "pod" in it. Seriously. So, put on those thinking caps, and get ready to win an iPod, er, portable audio player.
Apple’s lawyers are at it again. IPodder, one of the best-known open-source podcast aggregators, has been renamed Juice, apparently after lawyers from Apple contacted the development team with concerns that they were "deceiving users" that the app was somehow connected to Apple. In a way, I’m surprised it’s taken Apple this long. Though the company didn’t invent podcasting, now that they’ve embraced the concept, it seems perfectly in keeping with their brand strategy that they’d try to own it (after all, they’ve already filed to trademark "iPodcast"). And I have to admit, using the term "iPod" in your brand, and including a piece of fruit in your logo, is practically like asking for a call from Apple’s legal team. 
Lifehacker has written a little guide that describes how to use iTunes to get a steady stream of free videos in the genre of your choice from del.icio.us. It’s made possible by del.icio.us’ ability to generate an RSS feed of bookmarks of a certain filetype and iTunes’ support for video enclosures in podcasts. Totally cool.
If you’re like me and can’t always be trusted to sync your iPod or other portable player with your desktop before heading out and about, you may be interested to hear of Melodeo’s recent announcement of a solution that will stream podcasts to your cellphone. Their Mobilcast software, officially available come September, promises to simplify the process of finding and listening to podcasts on your phone. The service itself is free, but the gotcha is that unless you have an all-you-can-eat data plan with your wireless carrier, you’ll be paying for whatever data charges you incur from downloading podcasts over the air. Maybe now’s the time to check into that all-you-can-eat data plan, eh?