…And we’re back. It’s been a little over a week, but I have finally fixed Flock. To say it was a pain in my backside would be an understatement of gigantic proportions. In the past eight days, I have done everything from uninstall the browser to hack the about:config screen, all in a futile attempt to make this browser work as it should. As you can probably guess, my “solutions” didn’t fix squat. If anything, it made things worse. So what did solve my problem, you ask? It turned out that all I had to do was disable my beloved Tab Mix Plus extension. (Sherlock Holmes I’m not.) I already miss it, but I guess I can make it through, as they say. I would much rather have a working browser than the “gray screen of sadness” that I was seeing yesterday. Now that everything is working at peak condition, I can give Flock (and two of its closest friends) the introduction they so richly deserve. Expect to see our “qualified bachelors/batchelorette” get the old “once over”  tomorrow. With that said, here we go. Play me in, Herb!

Browser number one comes to us from San Francisco, California via Tokyo, Japan. She lists her hobbies as multitasking, script writing, and trying to get the leg up on her old rival, Sleipnir. Please welcome everyone’s favorite three in one dynamo, Lunascape!

Meeting people is the ultimate goal for browsers number two. It is said that he is on good terms with all of the top go-getters on the social scene, including Facebook, Twitter, and that lovable loser, MySpace. From the legendary Mozilla family, please welcome Flock!

And finally, we have a browser who is intimately familiar with life on the screen. Some say that his years of experience, as well as his innate ability to be more that “just a browser,” gives him the edge on our show. From New York City, please welcome browser number three, AOL Desktop!

…And now that all three of our lovely browsers have been introduced, it’s time for our questions … tomorrow, of course. (Oh come now. Don’t give me that. Everyone knows that a good host always keeps the audience begging for more.) Be sure to come back tomorrow for part two. On behalf of Brad Fallon and everyone here at (Our Fair Use Parody of) The Dating Game, this is a writer pretending to be legendary game show announcer Johnny Gilbert saying good night everybody!

As you might have heard by now, AOL has officially been cut loose by parent Time Warner. While it isn’t necessarily the “online powerhouse” that it once was, AOL still has a respectable following. This got us to thinking: what about the “other” big sites from days gone by? What are they up to? Are they even still around? Needless to day, the answers will no doubt surprise you. With that said, here we go:

Site #1: Compuserve

Website: http://www.compuserve.com (Compuserve Information Services)
Service Provided: ISP/Content provider
Back Then: Before there were dial-up Internet Service Providers, there was CompuServe. This revolutionary service from Columbus, Ohio provided users with all of the text-based bliss they could handle at once. While the service was definitely on the “decline” in the late 90’s, it was still popular enough to warrant a mention here.
Now: The old Compuserve web address leads to a sad looking web portal. There are a few articles and a webmail login, but that’s about it. Look a bit deeper, however, and one will find something truly amazing: an advertisement for CompuServe Internet service. It still exists … in a way!
What Happened?: Changing times and changing tastes, mainly. Many users simply decided that the old service did not fit their needs anymore, and switched to either AOL or a local ISP. Due to this unfortunate fact of life, CompuServe was put up for sale in 1996. It was first purchased by H&R Block, who sold it to WorldCom. WorldCom, in turn, sold half of the company, now called “CompuServe Information Services,” to rival AOL. The other half, CompuServe Network Services, became an official WorldCom subsidiary. WorldCom, complete with the CompuServe spin off, was bought by Verizon in 2006. The other half of the company — CompuServe Information Services, aka “the link above” — is still owned and operated by AOL today.

Site #2: Lycos

Website: http://www.lycos.com
Service Provided: Search engine
Back Then: Lycos was the first true “search engine superstar.” It delivered exactly what you were looking for in a timely fashioned. The later addition of popular web hosts Tripod and AngelFire didn’t hurt matters any, either.
Now: It’s all still there, albeit in a decidedly less original, fairly unimpressive format.
What Happened?: Yahoo. Everything that Lycos attempted to do (save for search), Yahoo did better. They simply could not compete. Ironically, the same exact thing happened to Yahoo a few years later when a young upstart called “Google” burst upon the scene. Isn’t it interesting how history has a nasty habit of repeating itself?

Site #3: Talk City

Website: http://www.talkcity.com
Service Provided: Online chat
Back Then: Let’s pretend for a second that it’s 1998. You want to get on the text-based free-for-all known fondly as Yahoo Chat, but your parents will simply not hear of it. Or worse yet, you don’t even have a computer at all. You have an aging WebTV box that does not support Java-based chat software. What to do? The answer is simple: you go to Talk City. Not only did Talk City not carry the stigma of “adult chat rooms,” it was completely WebTV friendly. Everybody wins!
Now: Much to our surprise, nothing has changed. It’s exactly how we remembered it.
What Happened?: Changing times and changing tastes once again. Who needs chat rooms when you have MMOs and social networking?

Site #4: PointCast

Website: http://pointcast.com/
Service Provided: Push technology
Back Then: PointCast was deemed by many to be the “future” of the Internet. Instead of going to a physical web page to get the daily news, all you had to do was turn on your screen saver. And then connect to the Internet using your “ultra-fast” 28.8k dial-up modem. And then sit through a line of advertising. Still, the idea was so promising that Microsoft eventually worked in line of push technology applets called “The Active Desktop” into Windows 98.
Now: The address leads to a glorified squatter site.
What Happened?: Simply put, PointCast was way ahead of its time. The standard home computer, even ones connected to the then-powerful ISDN line, could not handle the bandwidth PointCast and its contemporaries were pulling at the time. Still, don’t get the wrong impression here. Just because PointCast was a bit “early to the party” doesn’t mean that it was a bad idea. Believe it or not, push technologies are still around today. You just don’t know it. You know that handy little WeatherBug icon that sits in your system tray? Or that handy little stock ticker that occupies the top left hand corner of your desktop? Or how about that little applet that keeps track of your Gmail account? All three of those things mentioned are prime examples of push technology. So we ask you: before you visit Wall Street, stare blankly at your inbox, or check out the weather in sunny Acapulco for no other reason than to kill two minutes at work, please take a few moments to remember PointCast. In a strange way, we wouldn’t be anywhere without it.

The AOL that you know might become a thing of the past. Media giant Time Warner is looking to sell off the technology concern in “about three to four pieces.” Both Yahoo and Microsoft are have shown interest in the content and advertising portions of the company, which has a combined $10 billion price tag attached. AOL’s “Platform-A” advertising averages roughly 170.3 million users a month, ranking them higher than both Yahoo and Google in terms of total views.

In other news, Delicious has officially relaunched. Not only is the social bookmarking site sporting a new, streamlined look, it has a new address as well. Users who go to the traditional “del.icio.us” URL will now be redirected to delicious.com. Aside from the cosmetic changes, the new and improved Delicious features faster searches and higher quality search results. The upgraded Delicious.com is up and running now.

If you frequent sites that use the Sitemeter web analysis software and also use Internet Explorer, then you might have been experiencing some trouble as of late. Thanks to a previously unknown bug in the software, IE users were greeted with a blank page, followed by an error message. After the message is taken care of, the site disappears. Sites and blogs affected include tech blog Gizmodo and lifestyle blog Lifehacker.

Throughout the ages, people have used everything from quills to laptops in order to create literary masterpieces. And now, it’s time for your cell phone to join the party. Textnovel lets users write stories on their cell phones and then share them with whomever they please. Already a massive fad in Japan, Textnovel has all the tools to take off in North American. So go on and write. Who knows? That girl at the grocery store with the Sidekick might just be the next Hemingway.

A well maintained site featuring Cascading Style Sheets, or CSS, can be powerful tool in today’s web-driven world. A site full of overdone or improperly written code, on the other hand, could spell doom for your both your site and your prospects. That is why tools such as the CSS Optimizer are so useful. The no-frill page does what it sets out to do – cleans your code until nothing but a turbo-charged module waiting to be implemented. The CSS Optimizer is a completely free service.

Even though OpenID has made some major headway into being the one stop log in for the internet, it still has some drawbacks. Some find it difficult to log on, others forget their Open ID URL. This will change soon, though, with the advent of a new program called Click Pass. With Click Pass users can log in with one click, and are not required to remember their OpenID URL.

The European Commission has given the okay for Google’s acquisition of the online advertising company Double Click. Microsoft and ATT tried to block the deal, citing it as monopoly on the online advertising revenue.

Searchme goes into private beta today, allowing users to sign up for a test at their web page. The flashy web design is the main stand out function of this search engine, contrasting nicely with Google’s minimalistic interface. This search engine is not just flashy graphics, however, it brings back relevant results for most of the searches queried, and even does a Wikipedia style disambiguation.

Time Warner has made it official- AOL is up for sale. The web company is still considered a big deal, even if it is past its glory days. Now the question simply remains- who will buy it? And for how much?

Firefox 3 has gone into beta 4 this week, bringing the new version of the web browser closer to it’s final look and feel. One of the main things to note is the look and feel- it matches the operating system you are using almost exactly now. The other thing is the speed- FireFox 3 is fast. Much faster than the competitors.

**中文版视频

尽管OpenID已经在互联网上取得了很多不错的进展，但是它还是有很多弊病。有些人发现它登陆很困难，还有人会忘记自己的OpenID地址。这些都将有所改变，随着一个新的叫做Click Pass的软件，用户们可以实现一键登陆，而不必记住他们的OpenID地址。

欧盟委员会最终还是批准了Google对在线广告公司Double Click的收购。微软与ATT曾试图阻止这项交易，认为这是对网络广告收入的垄断行为。

Searchme今天进入了内测阶段，用户可以在他们的网站上进行注册测试。基于Flash的网页设计是这个搜索引擎的亮点，与Google极度简约的风格形成了对比。而它吸引人的不光是flash界面，另外，它会返回与搜索内容最相关的结果，甚至提供了与Wikipedia类似的排歧页面。

时代华纳正式宣布将出售美国在线。虽然美国在线已经风光不在，但它的影响依然很大。现在问题很简单，谁会买它？和价格是多少？

火狐3本周发布了beta4版，带来了更接近最终版本的外观和体验。值得关注的是新的界面和感觉，它将与你正在所使用的操作系统相吻合。另外一点是速度，火狐3确实很快。领先于其他的竞争者

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On Super Tuesday, Apple’s iPod released an Easter Egg for hard core geeks to descramble- Lincoln’s second inaugural address in base64 encoding. Funny.The FCC is auctioning off the 700mhz broadcast spectrum to prospective buyers. This week, the bidding hit an all time high — at $20 billion. Currently in the running for the largest block of the spectrum are Verizon, AT&T and … Google.

Time-Warner is considering a de-merger with the aged 800-pound gorilla of the Internet, AOL. Or they might just sell it off to another company. AOL chief executive, Jonathan Miller, said if they were separated, they’d be bought “as fast as they drew could draw up the papers.”

The WordPress podcast is back online after a hiatus, with a brand new episode, just in time for the release of the 2.3.3 version of WordPress.

And speaking of blogs, just when you thought there was a chance that traditional businesses were starting to get internet marketing, Business Week says, not so fast — we still don’t have a clue. In an article this week, one business week writer lists 10 Tech solutions your Small Biz Can’t Use. Among them? Spam filters, blogs, search engine optimization, AdWords, and online video. To save you time, I already checked the date of the article — it’s January 4th, not April first, so this February foolishness is not an April Fool’s joke. Hmmm.

eBay CEO, Meg Whitman, is rumored to be retiring after ten years as CEO. According to the Wall Street Journal, the departure could happen within the next few weeks. Meg, joined the company six months before it went public when they had 30 employees; today, they have 15,000.

Time Warner is planning to put caps on the amount of bandwidth people get when using their high speed internet. Users that exceed the limit will be charged for every megabyte above the threshold.

Venture Capital investments set a new six year high with an 11% increase over last year, a total of $29.4 billion in VC funding for new businesses.

Apple has projected a net profit of $1.58 billion for the first quarter of 2008, an increase of more than 30% over the first quarter of ‘07. Steve Jobs says the increase comes from starting the year with a strong new product line, including the Macbook Air, Mac Pro and, iTunes Movie Rentals.

Frank Kern’s free videos are REALLY moving the free line. Frank Kern is the copywriter behind three of the top four internet marketing launches of all time, including StomperNet , which sold more than $12 million in 12 hours.

In this free video series, Frank shows exactly how he built his own niche email list to more than 400,000, plus he explains many of his high level strategies for online persuasion — which he calls Mass Control. His ideas have been responsible for almost 30 million in sales.

Plus, you can watch his whistleblower video to get a glimpse “behind the scenes” at some of these huge product launches. And I can tell you in advance — the stories are true. Click here to learn from a real master of online marketing — for free.