Last month, Google Voice's iPhone application was rejected from the iPhone app store, a controversial move that the FCC is looking into. Now, it appears that Google may be working to circumvent Apple and AT&T, or at least seriously force their hand, by developing an iPhone optimized web application for Google Voice.
According to The New York Times, "Google says it is readying a replacement for the Google Voice app that will offer exactly the same features as the rejected app—except that it will take the form of a specialized, iPhone-shaped Web page. For all intents and purposes, it will behave exactly the same as the app would have; you can even install it as an icon on your Home screen."
This is precisely what Google did recently with Latitude for iPhone, when Apple "requested we release Latitude as a web application in order to avoid confusion with Maps on the iPhone, which uses Google (Google) to serve maps tiles." Using the Web to make calls on iPhone is nothing new or overly complex either: Jajah launched an iPhone optimized interface for VoIP calling all the way back in 2007.
In other words, assuming Google goes ahead and launches a Web interface for Voice, the only option AT&T and Apple will have for keeping customers away from it would be to block access to the URL the app lives on. And if that were happen, it's hard to imagine a scenario where the feds don't get extremely serious about the anti-competitive nature of what Apple and AT&T would be trying to do.
Earlier this week, Rupert Murdoch indicated that his company – News Corp – soon plans to start charging for all of the news content that it publishes online.
It's not a completely unprecedented move by News Corp – they have long charged for online access to The Wall Street Journal with some success – but most readers agreed with our conclusion that the plan probably won't work for most news outlets.
As it turns out, we'll soon find out who's right – us or Murdoch – as The Guardian reports that Murdoch's master plan will start with a test on The Sunday Times website as soon as November.
The plan is to launch The Sunday Times at its own URL (sundaytimes.co.uk) and charge a to-be-determined fee for access, with a to-be-determined business model (subscription or per-article charges). It should be a decent sized test bed; according to The Guardian, the printed edition of the newspaper sells more than 1 million copies each weekend in the UK.
In his prior comments, the media mogul indicated that he plans to be charging for all of his company's news websites by the middle of next year. Of course, that plan could get derailed quickly if The Sunday Times test proves a massive flop.
This post is part of Mashable's Spark of Genius series, which highlights a unique feature of startups. If you would like to have your startup considered for inclusion, please see the details here. The series is made possible by Microsoft BizSpark.
Quick Pitch: RentShout advertises rental listings on directories and sites around the web, delivering widespread online visibility right where renters are searching.
Genius Idea: If you need to sublet, rent, or sell a home, apartment, or office, you want to do it fast. Every day that place isn’t filled, the more potential income you lose. Just ten years ago, you’d post a listing to your newspaper classifieds. Now, there’s social media and Craigslist, but it can still take too long, especially if you are managing multiple properties.
RentShout combines social media distribution of housing and rental listings with speed, simplicity, and analytics. The core of RentShout is to get your listing onto dozens of directories and websites – including CraigsList – but it comes with features such as video syndication and Click-To-Call which make it stand out as a way to distribute your listings.
Getting listings up is simple. Add the details, add pictures, pick your template (for simple HTML listings), and then pick your package. Advertising a single listing on 60+ social media sites and directories costs $29.99, while five costs $90.00. If you consider that rent typically costs more than $29.99 per day, it can be well worth your money.
The rent listing tool also includes renter performance reports, which shows information on who is clicking and how often. You can also attack rental applications directly to your add, but we like the Click-To-Call feature the most. If a renter is interested, they can click the button to send you a text message with their phone number. It’s a lightning-fast way to connect with a potential lead and lock down a deal.
RentShout is effective because it simplifies the advertising process. You get listed in a range of housing directories that goes well beyond Craigslist. You can get a professional-looking listing up and running in minutes. Combine that with analytics and Click-To-Call, and you have a time-saver and a money-saver as well.
Sponsored by Microsoft BizSpark
BizSpark is a startup program that gives you three-year access to the latest Microsoft development tools, as well as connecting you to a nationwide network of investors and incubators. There are no upfront costs, so if your business is privately owned, less than three years old, and generates less than U.S.$1 million in annual revenue, you can sign up today.
Apparently, we're not out of the woods just yet. While Twitter itself has been working reliably for most of the day, some third-party applications remain impacted by measures the company has taken to defend against DDoS attacks.
UberTwitter, the most popular Twitter client for BlackBerry, seems to have been particularly hard hit by the outage, as users complaining about its unavailability have kept it a trending topic for most of the day (it's not working for me either).
As we head into the weekend, Twitter co-founder Biz Stone has posted another update about the current status of the service. On the Twitter blog, Stone writes:
"In the past 24 hours, we’ve been contending with a variety of attacks that continue to change in nature and intensity. We’re working to restore access to apps built on the Twitter platform that were affected by defensive measures—there was some overcompensation on our part as we tune our system to deal with this scale of attack."
Regarding reports that the attack is related to the Russia-Georga political conflict, Stone writes that the attacks "appear to have been geopolitical in motivation. However, we don’t feel it’s appropriate to engage in speculative discussion about these motivations."
Now that Yahoo has ceded its search business to Microsoft, it would be easy to call CEO Carol Bartz's comment to The New York Times that "Yahoo never was a search company" a piece of revisionist history.
But is it really? Bartz followed up that comment by saying "[it's more like] I am on Yahoo. I am going to do a search." While it's difficult to say that Yahoo never was a search company (it's deeply rooted in being one of the Internet's first directories of websites and a search tool to find them), what it has been at least over the last 5-10 years is a huge and somewhat confusing schmorgisborg of content and services.
Supposedly, somewhere around 20 percent of the Internet population uses Yahoo as its search engine. But frankly, they're not amongst my (and most likely your) Twitter followers (I asked), Facebook friends, or social circle. The way they use the Web is different than the way I use the Web – they don't necessarily have a Google toolbar installed, and they almost certainly don't use Google Chrome's "Omnibox" to do searches. Heck, most of them probably still use Internet Explorer.
If Yahoo's CEO says most of its searches come from users who are looking for more information about something else they saw on Yahoo, I'm inclined to believe her. She certainly knows more about where and who Yahoo searchers are than I do. Hence, cutting costs and perhaps improving revenue by using Bing for search isn't necessarily the worst idea in the world.
Has Yahoo lost much of the luster that made it the preeminent Internet company of the 90s and early 00s? Absolutely. But are they completely clueless and giving away the farm for next to nothing? It's too quick to jump to that conclusion. Bartz wants to build a business around page views and display ads; in other words, a media company and not a search engine. Getting people thinking that way is an important first step, even if the words used to justify it may be a bit Ballmer-esque.
It’s now generally assumed that Apple is set to launch a tablet computer, with an announcement as early as September and availability in November. An article in the Financial Times last month claimed the company was rushing to roll out the device in time for the Christmas buying season, while a Barron’s article this week quoted an analyst who claims to have tested a prototype of the machine.
But what will the Apple Tablet actually look like? So far, no photos of the final product have leaked, but that hasn’t stopped Photoshop ninjas coming out in full force, imagining how Apple’s sleek and minimalist design ethos will be infused into a tablet computer. In fact, the idea of an Apple tablet has been around so long that some Apple fans have ventured so far as to build their own.
Here we bring you a smorgasbord of our absolute favorite Apple tablet mockups and real-world Mac tablets. Don’t drool too much.
Conceptual Designs
MacBook Touch (Edwin Tofslie)
Edwin Tofslie’s mockup imagines a MacBook Touch that looks like a large iPhone, with the ability to dock with the iMac. Kind of a cool idea, but we’re unsure Apple would go for the docking concept.
Apple iPad
Flickr user kleber_zion imagines a large iPhone with touch-screen file browsing ala Cover Flow. It’s an attractive device, but seems a little predictable: we hope Apple will innovate more than this.
Apple NetBook (Mac Format)
Created by illustrator Adam Benton on commission by Mac Format magazine, these images show an iPhone-like tablet (although the magazine calls it a NetBook) with an optional external keyboard and Bluetooth headset. We love the idea of the wireless keyboard, which would make the tablet equally useful for both work and creative pursuits.
MacBook Touch Gray (Gizmodo)
Gizmodo has been illustrating its Apple tablet posts with this mockup of a “MacBook Touch”, the winner of a design contest on the site. We’re not huge fans of the heavy, industrial look, but there’s no doubt it has an Apple feel to it. What’s more, GarageBand would be a lot more fun with a touchscreen piano.
Apple Tablet (PC World)
Although the full size image is no longer available on their site, we’re fairly sure this tasty mockup originated with PC World. While many Apple tablet mockups have a borderless screen, this one is a little more robust-looking with its thick plastic edging. Also notable is that it appears to run the full Mac OS, albeit with icons inspired by the iPhone OS. One aspect we don’t like: the keyboard is too small and the inclusion of the touch wheel is just odd.
MacBook Touch Black
In July, Isamu Sanada envisioned a minimalist “MacBook Touch” that looks like a large iPod Touch. The device works both horizontally and vertically and appears to run the iPhone OS. The screen size looks perfect, even if one of the images makes the device look a little too thick.
MacBook Tablet
Created by artist “pickupjojo” on DeviantArt, the “MacBook Tablet” features a large screen and minimalist look: we won’t be surprised if the Apple device looks very similar.
MacBook Touch (Tommaso Gecchelin)
In April, designer Tommaso Gecchelin posted his vision for a new MacBook Touch with a unique hinged design, allowing it to be closed when not in use. The device also comes with a stand for upright usage and dual touch screens, allowing one to double as a touch-sensitive keyboard. The presentation is beautiful, but we doubt Apple would go for something this fussy.
Real-World Mac Tablets
The Modbook
There’s actually a Mac tablet on the market already…just not one made by Apple. The famous “Modbook” by Axiotron is a heavily modified MacBook that allows input via a pen. Various models are available on the Axiotron website.
iTab
Like the Modbook, the iTab is a real-life Mac tablet. Unlike the Modbook, you can’t buy one: it’s a one-off. Built from a customized MacBook and operated by a pen, its creator not only posted images and a video, but also documented the build process on his site.
Which is your favorite Apple Tablet mockup? Let us know in the comments.
Foursquare is taking major metropolitan cities like New York, San Francisco, and Los Angeles by storm. The location-based social game that we think has the potential to become the Twitter of location-based services, is creating heated local competitions for venue mayorships amongst the Twitterati and the web famous.
In an attempt to capitalize on the attention, buzz, and vendor-appeal of the app, 8coupons, the hyperlocal mobile coupon service, has wisely teamed up with Foursquare to offer a slew of coupons for discounts at hip NYC venues from August 8th – 15th. They’re celebrating their second birthday with the OCHO LOCO deals, rewarding game players, and providing Foursquare with what might be a business model in the process.
The Foursquare and 8coupons partnership will serve up automatic notifications with coupons when Foursquarers using the app are within a 3 block radius of a relevant deal. Depending on your whereabouts in the big apple, you could automatically discover deals like an 88 cent ice cream cone at Cold Stone, $8 haircut at Extravaganza Hair Salon, or 8 cent cupcake at Buttercup Bake Shop.
Although financial details of the partnership haven’t been disclosed, we can surmise that Foursquare will make a percentage of all sales from the participating vendors. The correlation between your physical location, a mobile app designed to tap into and find the best a city has to offer, and location-aware coupons is a brilliant way to capitalize on the social mobile web, and we hope to see more things like this in the future.
The deal demonstrates that, as we suspected, Foursquare is poised to be a prime player in the location-based social networking space. They’re still only a few months old, having launched at SXSW, but already proving that the very nature of the game and the experience are at the core of their business model.
The Wikipedia Usability Initiative just rolled out some design changes to the popular free encyclopedia Wikipedia that you can opt in to see with a user account.
Changes to the navigation system make getting around the site more intuitive, and give the horizontal set of tabs at the top a slicker gradient look and feel. The search box has been relocated to the upper right instead of in the lefthand sidebar, bringing the site more in line with user expectation about where to find the search function.
On the editing side, the toolbar for the rich text editor gains improved icons that make it clearer what action each button performs. The buttons have been broken into expandable sections as well, giving you a way to cut down on the visual clutter when editing. One of the expandable dropdown sections is a Help section that shows at a glance what the wiki syntax is for common formats.
To check out the beta redesign for yourself, you’ll have to either have an account or create one. You’ll see a “try Beta” link in the upper right-hand corner which will allow you to opt in to see the design changes. If you’d like to revert back to the classic look, just click the “Leave beta” link that will be at the upper right after you’ve toggled the beta version on.
Overall the design changes look like a positive direction for Wikipedia in terms of usability. Both the reading and editing modifications make the site appear a bit more modern and friendly and less utilitarian. Below are some screenshots of the read and edit interfaces before and after the changes.
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Based on the pair’s 7-part online series Prank War and sounding a bit like a cross between Punk’d and America’s Funniest Home Videos, the 30-minute weekly show “showcases the best pranks ever caught on camera and posted online.” The featured pranks will all be user-generated, “with no help from producers, professional editors or cameramen.”
They’ve got three episodes in the can already with three or five more left to shoot for a debut on August 27 at 10:30 PM. Pranked will air in MTV’s Thursday night block, no doubt chock full of signature silly humor and commentary.
And while you’re waiting for the show to air, see below for some video embeds from the Prank War series.
This post originally appeared on the American Express OPEN Forum, where Mashable regularly contributes articles about leveraging social media and technology in small business.
While social media for business has clearer, more tangible benefits to the success of your company, social media for personal use can be a little tricky. On the one hand, it helps you become closer with friends, co-workers, and customers. On the other hand, it can lead to awkward tensions and embarrassing disasters.
One area where there still isn't a lot of definition is the relationship between employees, bosses, and employers on the web. Is there a problem with friending your subordinates? Does it help build cohesion among staff, or is it just strange? Do you even want to? I'm hoping to provide some clarity and answers to these questions.
Should you friend your employees? The skinny:
What benefits could there be from friending employees? Social media's great strength is building connections and sharing information, no matter where you are. By knowing more about each other, you and your employees may become more comfortable with one another and become a more cohesive team. It's also a faster way to disseminate information to others.
What drawbacks could there be from friending employees? You could quickly learn about things you never wanted to know, and vice-versa. Many people, especially young and starry-eyed college graduates, still put up pictures of themselves drinking or in less-than-flattering situations. You or a friend could also say something that you'd never want employees to learn about.
What's considered "safe"? It's fine to interact with employees (and bosses, board members, and potential clients) on professional social networks, primarily LinkedIn.
And Twitter? Should I follow my employees? Unless the person has a private Twitter account, it's not generally a problem. In fact, this may be the best way to get to know an employee outside of work without violating his or her privacy. And your tweets will hopefully provide some insight or even lessons to your team. Yes, there have been incidents like "Cisco Fatty," where a 22 year old lost a job offer via Twitter, but these instances are very rare.
How about Facebook and MySpace? These are the tricky ones. For many, these are personal and private accounts that provide a looking glass into aspects close to him or her. Because of that, my personal suggestion is to ask before friending on these social networks. There are benefits to a closer relationship with your staff, but don't invade their privacy or make them feel uncomfortable by friending out of the blue. If you're still unsure, I highly recommend a CNN/CareerBuilder article on the subject.
So what should my ground rule be? Have a point to your social media friending. Following on Twitter will help you learn more about the insights of your employees, but you may want to consider friending on Facebook only if you've turned into fast friends with members of your team. Be respectful of privacy, don't say anything you wouldn't want your mom to hear, and ask when you're unsure, and you should navigate the waters of personal social media use just fine.
Twitter seems to be almost back to normal today, but yesterday's DDoS attacks marked one of the longest service outages since the regular sightings of the fail whale that plagued the microblogging tool last year.
At Mashable, we used most of the downtime to cover the news of the event, but elsewhere, it was highly disruptive to many people's day, forcing them to change plans and the way they communicate. NBA star Ron Artest even took to the telephone (and UStream) so he could stay in touch with fans without having Twitter available to him.
We're curious what you did during the downtime. Did you turn to an alternative platform? Did you keep hitting "refresh" until Twitter came back? Or did you do something more constructive, like say, work? Let us know in the comments!
When you check out at the supermarket, you've probably noticed celeb magazines like People and US Weekly touting having the first photos of a famous person's baby. These must sell pretty well, because stars have been paid up to $11 million for such photos.
Say what you want about this practice, but it's certainly refreshing that at least some stars are forgoing it and going directly to their fans. Tennis champ Roger Federer is the latest, sharing the first photos of his new twin girls with his 2.5+ million Facebook fans.
Considering his level of global superstardom, Federer has become one of the more actively engaged celebs in social media. He routinely posts photos, videos, and updates to his Facebook Page, and even takes time to answer questions from young tennis players. He also shared his enthusiasm for the platform when announcing he had hit 2 million followers during an ESPN interview.
In turn, his fan engagement is off the charts – since posting the baby photo four hours ago, it's already received 55,000+ likes and 14,000+ comments.
Twibbon, a neat service that lets you customize your Twitter avatar to support movements you believe in – from charities to IE6 No More – is releasing a new series of Twitter ribbons today in light of yesterday’s Twitter outage (see Twitter Down).
The new ribbons include a Fail Whale (my favorite), “DDoS SUCKS”, the Fail Caterpillar and an upside-down Twitter bird.
The Twibbon concept is both effective and wonderfully simple: it provides a great way to rally around a cause and identify with a group on Twitter.
On Tuesday we brought you news of IE6 No More, the movement to accelerate the death of Internet Explorer 6. The campaign asks sites to include code that detects IE6 visitors and encourages them to upgrade to Firefox, IE8, Safari or Google Chrome. On Tuesday the movement composed of around a dozen sites, today that number exceeds 70 participants.
The sites jumping on board are by no means insignificant: they include established internet startups, consulting firms and (of course) design blogs. As the sites creator, David Rusenko, told us on Tuesday, the aim is to target both personal users who are behind the times and put pressure on corporate IT departments:
"We think we can have a huge impact: For those users that are just unaware they are using an old browser (mothers, grandmothers), we'd like to encourage them to upgrade and have a better experience using our sites. For those users in corporate environments, we'd like to start putting pressure on the IT department to upgrade — the more users who complain about seeing the prompts (especially if coming from the top), the more pressure the IT department will have to either upgrade IE 6 or install Firefox side-by-side with IE 6 for compatibility reasons."
With 72 sites on board at last count, that aim is closer to becoming a reality.
Did Twitter, Facebook, LiveJournal, YouTube, Google Sites and Google’s Blogger all get attacked yesterday to silence one man? According to the testimony of a Facebook executive, they did.
A blogger in the Republic of Georgia with the username Cyxymu was the victim, according to Facebook’s chief security officer Max Kelly. The claims cement earlier reports that social networking sites have been dragged into the Georgia-Russia crisis, leading to the first simultaneous attack on the largest social media sites. Kelly told CNet::
“It was a simultaneous attack across a number of properties targeting him to keep his voice from being heard. We’re actively investigating the source of the attacks and we hope to be able to find out the individuals involved in the back end and to take action against them if we can.”
Google is quoted as saying:
“We are aware that a handful of non-Google sites were impacted by a DOS attack this morning, and are in contact with some affected companies to help investigate this attack. Google systems prevented substantive impact to our services.”
As part of the attack, spam was sent to LiveJournal users that appeared to come from cyxymu.
Political Motives
The claims back up earlier reports in the New York Times that Thursday’s attack was sparked by the conflict between Russia and Georgia. The aim was to take down Cyxymu’s accounts, particularly the LiveJournal blog where he posted about the crisis. While Google’s sites held up to the barrage, Twitter and LiveJournal proved less robust.
While DDoS attacks are notoriously hard to defend against, it’s clear that Twitter was far less equipped to cope with such an attack: no doubt they’ll be taking a closer look at how such issues could be handled in the future.
It’s really not a good week for social services. We’ve had Twitter down, Facebook down, LiveJournal too…and tonight Xbox Live, the multiplayer gaming platform for Xbox users, was also down. Gaming was once again a solitary experience.
Twitter users are have been reporting a return to uptime within the last hour or so, and the Xbox Live Twitter feed is claiming things are back on track.
Were you caught up in the Xbox Live downtime today? Let us know in the comments.
The video seems like something out of a TV crime show. And, as it turns out, that's because it's a serious acting job. Dalia Dippolito of Boyton Beach, Florida thought she had a foolproof plot for killing her husband. Unfortunately for her, the hitman she hired was actually an undercover police officer.
In turn, the Boyton Beach police setup a fake crime scene, where they informed Dippolito that her husband was dead (he wasn’t). Her reaction was captured on video and uploaded to YouTube – video that will ultimately serve as evidence when Dippolito stands trial for solicitation to commit first degree murder.
The full details of the bizarre story are available on the Boyton Beach PD website (PDF link), but here's the video that will earn Dippolito her 15 minutes of fame, and most likely, 15+ years of jail time:
As much as we’d love to look picture perfect in every photo, most of us, myself included, need a little retouching from time to time. Sure there’s those that just let it all hang out, blemishes and all, but for the rest of us there’s Photoshop or online photo editing tools.
PicTreat, one such brand new online photo editor, is catering to our vainer side by promising fully automated online facial retouching in just one click. The web-based application is primarily for enhancing beauty shots of human faces by removing blemishes, red-eye, and performing color-correction.
PicTreat incorporates the social functionality we’ve come to expect from online photo editors, so you can log in using Facebook Connect, and even grab existing photos stored on Facebook, MySpace, Flickr, or Photobucket. Of course you can also upload photos or use their URLs for editing.
Once you determine the photo you want to correct, PicTreat will provide with a few photo treating options, and once you click okay, it will automatically and quickly correct the photo. The final result is a treated photo, with the original still accessible for comparison. Should you be happy with the results you can save it to your computer, share the image URL, grab the embed code, crop it as a profile pic for Facebook, Twitter, Delicious, or MySpace, or post to a myriad of different social sites.
PicTreat is a simple app that works wonders on close ups (I didn’t know I could look so good), and there’s absolutely no learning curve. Now if only they could create a way so that we could auto-correct all of those terrible photos that we’re tagged in on Facebook too.
As we learn more about the Denial of Service Attacks that took down Twitter and other social media sites earlier today, yet another wave of spam is invading the microblogging service. Thousands of tweets are currently being spread around the network pointing to a website promoting a dubious money making scheme: ThursdayProfit.org.
It appears that this is the exact same scam as yesterday, where links to the same style of site with a different domain name flooded Twitter. This is at least the third time this week that this scam has surfaced, though at the moment, it remains unclear if it's the result of a compromised third-party app, a phishing scam, or perhaps related to today's DDoS attacks.
Speaking of today's DDoS attacks, the latest news is that they may have indeed been related to the Russia-Georgia conflict, with CNET reporting that a single pro-Georgian blogger and his identities across social media sites may have been the target of today's attacks. Who might be responsible for them, however, remains a mystery for the moment.
Web TV is the underdog in the entertainment world. Often times great talent is forced to find a home and an audience online, sometimes after being rejected by more mainstream outlets. The best a web series can typically hope for is the success that The Guild has seen over the past year.
Very rarely, however, does a web series get to break the mold and make it on your small screen (remember Quarterlife on NBC?). It’s incredibly remarkable, then, that Pure Pwnage, the NSFW long-running character-driven web series, is announcing that they’ve inked an eight episode deal with Canadian TV’s Showcase.
Pure Pwnage’s 8 episode stint on Showcase will air in 2010, and the immature duo — main characters Jeremy and Kyle — have made a video short announcing the deal. The online series originally debuted back in 2004 and follows the fictional professional gamer, Jeremy, his brother, and their gamer friends. The show reportedly pulls in over 200,000 monthly viewers, and has a cult online following of dedicated fans.
Showcase is a part of CW Media, and though unknown in the states, it’s a channel that airs popular television series like The Office and Weeds. According to web TV blog, Tubefilter, the Pure Pwange fan base stateside will eventually be able find the episodes in iTunes. The site interviewed Geoff Lapaire, Pure Pwnage director and co-star, who also noted that, “We are hoping that there will be enough interest in the US to convince someone to pick up the show there.”
Interestingly enough, Lapaire attributed the studio’s interest in their show to a live screening, saying “A studio executive came to one of our live screenings at the Bloor Cinema in Toronto and was completely blown away … About 600 fans showed up to watch that particular episode, and the energy at our live screenings is always mind blowing."
We’re pretty impressed by the deal, which will hopefully pave the way for more made-for-the-web content to find a home in front of mainstream audiences. Hopefully Pure Pwnage will fair better than the web to TV flop, Quarterlife.
Last month, 
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The video seems like something out of a TV crime show. And, as it turns out, that's because it's a serious acting job. Dalia Dippolito of Boyton Beach, Florida thought she had a foolproof plot for killing her husband. Unfortunately for her, the hitman she hired was actually an undercover police officer. 
As much as we’d love to look picture perfect in every photo, most of us, myself included, need a little retouching from time to time. Sure there’s those that just let it all hang out, blemishes and all, but for the rest of us there’s Photoshop or online photo editing tools.
Web TV is the underdog in the entertainment world. Often times great talent is forced to find a home and an audience online, sometimes after being rejected by more mainstream outlets. The best a web series can typically hope for is the success that 
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