Microsoft Recruits Student Bloggers With Free Software And Trips To Conferences

We’ve confirmed with Microsoft that the tech giant has launched a new program, called Student Insiders, to enlist college students to blog about Microsoft products. In return, the Microsoft “Student Insider” will be able to attend Microsoft conferences, such as Microsoft’s developer conference, PDC, and others and then write about their experiences and the products. The student will get all expenses paid to attend conferences as well as receive free training on Microsoft products. Student Insiders are expected to cover 15 events or topics a year, with at least “500 engagements per event/topic.”
It appears that Microsoft will try to recruit students with “established blogs” to write about a wide variety of Microsoft products. The advertisement we received focused on getting students to review Microsoft’s Expression Studio, a design and development software.
This program is different than Microsoft’s Student Partners program, which is a program student evangelists of Microsoft products. Microsoft also launched a program, called DreamSpark, last year that gave students free developer software. Google has a similar program to the Student Partners program, called Google Student Ambassadors.

Microsoft is seeking a knowledgeable, charismatic, and motivated student to become a Student Insider to blog about the new Expression Studio.
Microsoft is a multinational computer technology corporation specializing in the development and manufacturing of software for computing devices. Microsoft Expression Studio opens up a new world of creative possibility. Its professional design tools give you the freedom to make your vision real—whether you’re designing for standards-based Web sites, rich desktop experiences, or Silverlight.
The purpose of this position is to introduce the world to Microsoft’s Expression Studio by a person who is most likely to understand the full range of its capabilities: you. You will use your existing blog to discuss various tips, tricks and advantages with the Expression Studio. In addition to being trained on the software by the experts at Microsoft, you will get to attend high-profile technology conferences, such as MIX10: March 15-17th, 2010 at the Mandalay Bay in Las Vegas.
Key responsibilities:
· Using your existing blog to blog about Microsoft Expression Studio
· Attending exclusive technology conferences as a representative of Microsoft, such as the MIX10 conference, March 15 – 17 at the Mandalay Bay in Las Vegas
· Acting as a peer influencer to introduce people to the benefits of Microsoft’s products
Amazing benefits:
· Entrance into exclusive and high profile technology conferences with all expenses paid
· Training by industry experts
· Invaluable resume building experience
· The title of Student Insider, denoting knowledge and expertise in technology
· Additional products and incentives
What you need to know:
· There is only one Student Insider position for the Expression Studio campaign
· The campaign will kick-off as soon in just a few short weeks
· Student Insiders are expected to cover 15 events/topics a year (selected by Microsoft) with at least 500 engagements per event/topic

Bing Goes The iPhone. Still Great For Porn.

Since the dawn of Bing, it’s been exceptionally good at one thing: Finding porn. Its new iPhone app, which launched tonight in the App Store, is no different.
By default, the app has a Safe Search setting of “Moderate.” Searching for “porn” this way yields several promising results. However, with just two clicks, any kids can turn off safe search and off they go! The porn results are nothing, if not impressive.
I love this for two reasons: 1) The app is rated 4+, yet it’s super simple to gain access to hardcore porn in a few clicks. This continues to highlight Apple’s hypocrisy when it comes to the App Store. Apps that allow you to lift up Asian schoolgirl’s outfits are just fine. Apps that make satirical references to public figures are banned. And now, apps that gives you hardcore porn at your fingertips are rated 4+. Sure, this content in on the web, and not in the app itself, but to a viewer, what’s the difference? 2) Bing continues to be a great resource for porn.
To be fair, Google’s iPhone app also allows you to search for porn. But, 1) It’s not as easy to search for just images with the Google app (image search is a plus for the Bing app) 2) the results are much less hardcore, and 3) It’s much less obvious as to how to turn off the safe search settings.
All that said, the Bing app is actually quite nice. The voice search feature (just like Google’s on the iPhone) works quite well. The app also features the standard Bing daily images complete with hover-over factoids. It also has a nice overlay on the main screen to easily search for Movies, Maps, Businesses, News, Direction, and yes Images. Find the app in the App Store here. It’s a free download.
Both images below taken on a search for “porn” with safe search turned off. As you can see, Bing returns many more great results. Badda Bing.

Twitter’s Geolocation API Appears To Be Live. But Most Of You Are Lost.

I noticed something interesting tonight. In the new build of Tweetie 2 (not out yet), a bunch of little red location markers started appearing next to tweets in my stream. Knowing that this new version was built using Twitter’s new Geolocation APIs, I inquired if this mean they had been turned on. Sure enough, they have, developer Loren Brichter just confirmed after talking to Twitter.

But there’s a slight problem. Apparently, the reason these geotags are showing up for all tweets (even those not actually geotagged) is that the documentation was a little unclear on how to handle non-geotagged tweets, Brichter says. The result is that every single tweet is tagged with a location somewhere just off the coast of Africa, south of Ghana. Either this is Atlantis, the Island from Lost, or we have a problem. [Update on the location below]

Brichter is aware of the issue and has already resolved it, and has resubmitted Tweetie 2 to the App Store for approval. Since no one officially has Tweetie 2 yet, this probably doesn’t affect you at all. But you have to wonder if other Twitter app developers were confused by this as well. If so, we could see a lot of apps with some wonky geolocation data.

Twitter hasn’t yet responded to my request for more information. It’s not clear if they meant to turn this on tonight. We do know that they had originally planned to launch it last week at the Twitter Conference in LA, but it wasn’t quite ready yet.

Earlier today, Twitter announced the new Lists feature, which will also feature an API. And of course, everyone is waiting for the Retweet API as well.

Update: As our apparently geography major readers have informed me, the area just off the coast of Ghana is lat/long 0,0. This makes sense — there is no location data attached to these tweets, so apparently they default to 0,0.

Zuckerberg Moves Up The Forbes 400 List. Net Worth Now $2 Billion

Forbes today released their annual 400 richest Americans list — no surprise, Facebook’s Mark Zuckerberg is on it at number 158. His net worth is $2 billion, one-fifth of Facebook’s $10 billion valuation.

At 25, Zuckerberg is by far the youngest member of the Forbes 400 list. The next youngest person on the list is hedge fund operator John Arnold, who is 35. Last year, Zuckerberg debuted on the list at #321. His net worth at the time was $1.5 billion.

Zuckerberg started Facebook in his Harvard dorm room in 2004, and now Facebook is the third largest site on the internet. In May, Russian investment firm Digital Sky Technologies invested $200 million into Facebook, setting its $10 billion valuation.

Earlier this month, Facebook announced that they now have 300 million users and cash flow positive for the first time last quarter.

Cry Us A River: Timberlake Bails On His Own SF Party To Go Dress Up As Sean Parker

So, Justin Timberlake was supposed to be at a party tomorrow night in San Francisco. The “special, private celebration” was in honor of the company Particle (which counts Timberlake as its lead investor), which recently launched its Robo.to service. Myself and fellow writers Jason Kincaid and Paul Carr were so excited that we’ve been gossiping about it all day in back-channel conversations. I believe Paul even bought a JT book for him to sign, earlier today. But sadly, Justin, is bailing on us.

It appears that like most celebrities, Timberlake came down with a case of the “scheduling conflict,” and had to fly back to L.A. (or stay there, not sure if he left or not) to go be a movie star. But we’ll forgive him this time because of the reason for his conflict: He needed to be on the set of The Social Network, yes, the Facebook movie.

But Paul has a brilliant back-up plan. Why doesn’t Particle get Sean Parker, the Facebook founder that Timberlake is portraying in the movie, to be Justin’s stand-in? Perfect, right? Of course, Parker may be busy, seeing as he has three or so jobs at the moment, the most recent of which is being a member of Yammer’s board.

Timberlake needs to understand that the real way to get rich — and I’m talking real rich — is to be a Silicon Valley star, not a movie star portraying a Silicon Valley star. Next time, JT, next time.

Twingly Channels: A Personalized, Social, Real-Time Memetracker

A few weeks ago, we wrote about Swedish startup Twingly and its stealth memetracker Twingly Channels. Tonight, Twingly is launching in closed beta. In the past, Twingly has brought us a microblogging search tool, a search engine for blogs, and a global ranking system for blogs. Twingly Channels essentially lets users to create their own personalized real-time memetracker. To sign up for an invite, click here with the code “TechCrunch.”

As we wrote previously, Twingly is a mix between Digg and FriendFeed. Twingly Channels lets users to create their own personalized social memetracker by collecting feeds and search terms covering any topic or event into a channel they share with others. And the site has real-time functionality. Users can post links posted by users, content from RSS feeds, and real-time search results for terms from blogs and microblogs (i.e. Twitter). The resulting stream is filtered into a Friendfeed-like channel where people can comment on, like, or dislike incoming items.

Channels will be public by default, but to comment or subscribe you will need to sign up. Twingly will also employ a ranking system to filter content using a proprietary alogorithm. Every item coming into the channel is continuously ranked using links from blogs, Tweets, user comments and likes. The highest ranked items are shown in the Popular view. Twingly Channels can also be used by companies for brand tracking and social media monitoring and can be kept private for these purposes.

The site could be useful for aggregating RSS feeds, tracking specific content on blogs and microblogs and then sharing that content with others, all on one site. The blog/microblog search is powered by Twingly’s search engine which tracks close to 26 million blogs around the world. It’s similar in some ways to Streamy.

MySpace Music Launches Down Under: Now Live In Australia And New Zealand

When it comes to free media streaming, the United States is flush with premium content from great sites like Hulu and MySpace Music. But aside from a handful of exceptions, the rest of the world is out of luck. Today, the balance changes a bit: MySpace has just launched its hugely popular MySpace Music service in Australia and New Zealand, bringing those regions unlimited streaming of songs and albums from all four major music labels, as well as many indies.

AU/NZ users will have access to the same features as the US site, including shareable playlists, artist activity feeds, and other social functionality. But there is at least one notable difference: while MySpace Music launched in the United States with Amazon as its partner for purchasing digital downloads, the AU/NZ version has teamed with Apple’s iTunes. MySpace wouldn’t comment on whether this is foreshadowing a larger partnership, but we may well see the Apple deal extend stateside. MySpace likely had an exclusive partnership with Amazon for the US launch, but it’s been a year (which may well have been the length of the deal), so it may soon be free to explore other options.

Since launching last fall, MySpace Music has been something of a bright spot for the otherwise faltering social network. The site has seen a tenfold growth in traffic since launching, with the US portal drawing 18.95 million users (it’s also the #1 site in time spent for the all important 18-34 demographic, though some of this can be attributed to the fact that users can leave it playing in the background). MySpace Music also recently rolled out a much improved homepage and has seen a number of exclusive releases.