YouTube founders plan Delicious mix

YouTube founders Chad Hurley and Steve Chen are cooking up another Internet company. This time, its ingredients will include the content-sharing service Delicious.

The creators of the world’s most popular video site acquired Delicious from Yahoo Inc., which decided late last year to either close or sell the service. The financial terms of the deal announced last week weren’t disclosed.

Delicious will become part of Avos, an Internet startup that Hurley and Chen have set up near the San Mateo, Calif., office where they started YouTube in 2005. They sold YouTube to Google Inc. for $1.76 billion in 2006.

Avos says it is working on ways to help people navigate the torrent of information cascading from Internet services. How it intends to do that is a mystery. Avos didn’t respond to requests for an interview.

“We see this problem not just in the world of video, but also cutting across every information-intensive media type,” Chen said in a statement.

Delicious apparently will evolve into something slightly different as Avos pursues its mission. Delicious, started in 2003, provides a forum for sharing Web bookmarks as “tasty” information. The service will remain in its current form until July, according to information posted last week on Delicious’ website. There were no further details on how it might change after that.

 

AT&T offering ‘portable cell towers’

For the first time, AT&T is selling small, portable cellular antennas that will allow corporate and government customers to provide their own wireless coverage in remote or disaster-affected areas.

Usually, cellphone companies have to restore service after disasters like hurricanes by sending in their own trucks that act like mobile cell towers. But AT&T’s new product would let first responders such as police and emergency workers immediately control where they have coverage.

One of AT&T’s options is a unit that packs into a suitcase, with a satellite dish carried separately. The unit requires outside power, such as a generator, to work.

The Remote Mobility Zone can handle 14 simultaneous calls, and data at less-than-broadband speeds. Coverage extends up to half a mile from the unit. The “portable cell tower” can also be mounted in a car or truck.

 

Friendster deleting decade of data

Faded social networking site Friendster will soon delete nearly a decade’s worth of user photos, blog entries and other data in a revamp to set it apart from Facebook, company officials said last week.

The overhaul is meant to help Friendster regain a semblance of online relevance after being outmuscled by Facebook, which boasts about 600 million active users. Friendster has accumulated at least 115 million registered members since 2002, but only about 40 million currently have valid emails and fewer still are active users.

Friendster emailed its members during the past week to inform them to save their pictures, profile information, messages and blog posts on other sites by May 31, said Nor Badron, a company spokesman based in Singapore.

“This is an evolution of the site to push the boundaries of our business,” Nor told The Associated Press. “It’s not about direct competition with Facebook.”