Skype to offer real-time voice translationsÂ? - Earlier,Â? we posted about eBay needing to be more innovative,Â? and their ability to use Skype to broaden their revenue stream with recently releasedÂ? features like Skypecasts. Techcrunch has a post about another new feature for Skype: real-time voice translations. AsÂ? we mentioned in my “Internet Darwinism” post, innovation is definitely key to any business, especially the Internet. The recent purchase ofÂ? SkypeÂ? hasn’t seen the return that may have been originally expected, eBay can look to these new features to help improve their ROI. Sony’s release of their MouseTalkÂ? optical mouse/Internet phone that is Skype certified may be another big boost for the service. Click here for the article on TechCrunch.

Others less than impressed with Google -Â? We mentioned that the last few releases from Google haven’t really delivered at the level thatÂ? we expect from the company. Paul Kedrosky posted on his blog complaining about the inability of Google to ever leave the “Beta” status on many of its products, and even rips the latest releases from Google Press day. When Steve Ballmer was interviewed by Matt Marshall, Ballmer went as far as to call Google’s Desktop “more embarassing than anything else.” For the full Ballmer interview, see this link. (Google Notebook is supposed to be released soon, should we expect another disappointing Beta?)

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We’reÂ? sure everyone has either seen or heard about Google’s Press Day.Â? We actually took the time to watch a fair bit of the webcast, and the presentation is fairly impressive, but for a company like Google,Â? we’re still a little suprised. At the beginning of the presentation, Google does a brief rundown of some of the releases from the past year, and it is an impressive list, but despite the release of several great products, there are just as many products that I found lacking.

Google TrendsÂ? was one of the big releases made yesterday, and it is an interesting service. Users can track how often an item is searched for on Google, and this search can be refined temporally - choose a specific range of dates for a specific search term - and the results can be filtered based on geographic location. Several different search terms can be entered, and the data produced could, theoretically, be used to extract a great deal of important trends and information. ButÂ? we find a major flaw. The graph produced is basically useless. Without a scale on the Y-axis of the graph, it is impossible to compare the data. There may seem to be a significant difference between the search frequency of Flash and Ajax/Ruby on Rails, but this could simply be a difference of one. There is no way to tell. And since there is no way to tell the magnitude of the difference, it is impossible to tell if the difference in the search terms is actually significantly difference, statistically speaking.

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Google turns down Olive - It shouldn’t come as any suprise that Google may have taken a page from Microsoft’s book on this rejected purchase. I first read about the deal on SiliconBeatÂ? and chose to wait and see what happened with the deal. I read today that not only has the deal been rejected (after very in-depth analysis of the company and their product), but Google will soon be looking to open up shop in Israel themselves. It will be interesting to see if any Olive employees look to jump ship and join the dark side - which now seems toÂ? consistÂ? of two companies. (And siteadvisor thought that Google isn’t evil?).

Speaking of siteadvisor - The site acquired by Mcafee in December is providing a fairly interesting service - rating the reputation of websites. It has been described as “Rapleaf for websites,” which is probably a fair comparison, and although we haven’t checked out the site (or our rating) yet, we will soon be logging in to give the site and their service a review.

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In Canada, it has just been ruled by the Supreme Court that hostsÂ? are notÂ? liable for their guests that make the choice toÂ? drink, drive, and end up injuring someone. One of the key factorsÂ? in this specific case is that the party was a “BYOB” or bring your own booze/bottle party, and the hosts were not providing or pouring the alcohol. The hosts merely provided a service (having a party), and the user of this service chose to abuse it by driving away intoxicated.Â?

With so many sites relying on user generated content, the question of liability for the owner of the website starts to become a very interesting topic. In the 90’s, Napster provided a service to a wide variety of users. Having been involved in computers and the Internet long before the average user,Â? we would have to say that downloading music and burning customer CD’s is probably one of the major catalysts in bringing computers into the mainstream. Finally, the average person had a use for the technology so many of us had become so accustomed to. It was a good run, but the big corporations running the music industry were eventually able to shut down the popular P2P site, and the file swapping network has been struggling to remain relevant on the Internet ever since. Several other P2P sites have flourished in the absense.

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Besides Internet advertising, an industry that should only grow in the next few years, the greatest potential for monetization on the Internet will likely come from having (or having the rights to) original or unique content. In 1990, Sony Entertainment purchased M-G-M Grand Studio, home of Columbia/TriStar Pictures. Not only did the company acquire the rights to some of the greatest classic movies ever made, including the “James Bond” series and “Rocky,” but they have also gone on to release blockbusters like “Spiderman” and “Jumanji.”Â? Sony’s collection of colour movies is considered to be the greatest in the world, and Sony’s greatest asset.

Although controlling content is important, all that really provides is potential revenue. With declining revenues from movie theatres and movie rentals, and as the consumer shifts towards online access to media, entertainment companies will have to find ways to capitalize on that potential. ABC has started streaming some of their most popular shows the day after they air - with a catch. The shows are free, and the user can skip through chapters in the episode, but the showÂ? willÂ? have streaming commercials that can’t be skipped. Again, this is definitely an important step in capitlizing on content, but it still requires users.

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