When we first came across Microsoft Songsmith, it was the promo video that made us cringe. But the song-making software is inspiring a whole new genre on YouTube where people alter famous music videos and concert footage by stripping out the original instruments and replace them with tinny keyboards or folk banjos, and keep the vocals. The results are a twisted breed of classic hits that are fascinating in the same way that terrible automobile accidents are. Once you start watching, it is hard to look away.

These songs as sung through Songsmith have become a popular meme. Music from the Beatles to “Nirvana to Radiohead have all gotten the Songsmith treatment. There is even a heavy metal version of the Rickroll. Youtube member azz100c, who also appears to be the author of the Journeys of Jack Tripper blog, is particularly obsessed (and adept) at making these Songsmith classics.

Below I present some of the best of the worst.

The Superbowl is in 17 hours, but many people think they already know who will win. The odds on betting site Betfair give the the Pittsburgh Steelers a 69 percent chance of winning versus the Arizona Cardinals. Both were seen as long shots at the beginning of the season, when the Steelers were given a 4 percent chance of winning the Super Bowl, and the Cardinals were only given a 1 percent chance. (See chart).

Betting markets like Betfair’s are a form of prediction market, so it looks like it is the Steeler’s game to lose. Then again, what do Brits know about American football? U.S. residents cannot legally bet on Betfair, which is based in London.

Here’s a question for you. How many Q&A sites does the Web really need? Already, there is Yahoo Answers, WikiAnswers, Mahalo Answers, Linkedin Answers, ChaCha and dozens beyond. But Wikia (and Wikipedia) co-founder Jimmy Wales thinks there is room for one more.

We learned from a tip that he has quietly launched Wikianswers, a Question & Answer site that attempts to create one true, consensus answer for each question, wiki-style. If this sounds familiar it is because Wiki Answers, which is part of Answers.com, does the exact same thing and had 26.7 million unique visitors worldwide in December (comScore). (Yahoo Answers had 144.7 million worldwide uniques in December).

And then there is the little problem of the name. It is supposed to be Wikia Answers!, but in the current logo the last “a” of Wikia shares the first “a” of Answers, making it Wikianswers. The already established WikiAnswers might have a problem with that. (The URLs are different: http://answers.wikia.com and http://wiki.answers.com/, respectively)

Update: Wikia Gil Penchina responds in comments:

Wikianswers started at Wikia in November, 2004. The other site with the same name was called FAQFarm back then and changed their name without getting our permission.

Last year I blogged about the YouTube corner at the World Economic Forum event in Davos, Switzerland. They had prime real estate between the main conference area and private meeting rooms, and heads of state, business executives, Nobel Laureates and rock stars strolled by and stopped to leave a video.

YouTube was back this year with an even better setup. In addition to computers where people could create YouTube videos answering various questions (Kofi Annan is pictured to left), the Google team brought in a touch screen version of Google Earth, complete with World Economic Forum data layered on top. Google earth was projected onto a wall, and people could zoom around the earth and view interesting data like historic and projected climate changes.

Ed Sanders (YouTube Marketing Manager) and Amit Sood (Google International Product Marketing Manager) walked me through both the YouTube and Google Earth products. Video is below:

Pew Research Center’s Project for Excellence in Journalism unveiled a new index yesterday that traces blogs and social networking sites. To be honest, it doesn’t say a whole lot that we don’t already know.

The New Media Index’s first report states “From the preparations to the swearing-in to the music, President Barack Obama’s inauguration was by far and away the dominant subject debated and dissected by bloggers, user news sites and other social media last week.” The index reported that close to 63 percent of links embedded in social media sites related to the inauguration. Big surprise. The report also said that commentary was very passionate and ran the “ideological gamut.” Also, not earth-shattering news and confirms what everyone already knows-people tend to be more politically feisty on blogs and social media sites.

We’re not quite sure what’s going on, but a couple of minutes ago any search result from Google started being flagged as malware with a message stating “This site may harm your computer”.

Twitter is abuzz with people reporting the massive error (also look for tags #googmayharm or #googmayhem), and it’s clear that this is happening around the world. Apparently, it’s happening with any browser on any platform too.

Clicking the message takes people to a support page from Google, but this is being bombarded with millions of people right now so it’s very slow to respond. I saw the page briefly, and it pointed to StopBadware.org (which is obviously also loading slowly right now).

Update: it seems to be fixing itself. I’m having no more issues on Google Belgium, still getting warning messages for malicious software when I search Google.com. Also, it only seems to occur when you’re searching as a signed-in user now.

Update 2: it seems to be fine now. Lasted about 15 minutes (Google says the window was more like 55 minutes). You can take a deep breath now and go on with whatever you were doing before

Now we just have to wait for Google to tell us what went wrong. It’s quite clear that a meltdown of this size, no matter how short it was, will be the topic of discussion for the coming days (and not only at the Googleplex, I’d wager).

Update 3: Marissa Mayer has now explained the error on the Official Google Blog. She puts it down to human error after a ‘/’ was mistakenly put in an update sent from the non-profit StopBadware.org to Google (the non-profit also posted more details). The result was every URL in Google’s database being classified as “malware” until the stray ‘/’ was removed.

I sat down with MySpace CEO Chris DeWolfe at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland for a few minutes between sessions he was participating in. Travis Katz, GM of MySpace International, was also supposed to attend but was off skiing for the day.

DeWolfe talks about the two star hotel he’s staying at here in Davos (complete with a Murphy Bed), and compares the more somber mood of the event to the last time he attended two years ago.

Regarding MySpace, DeWolfe says he’s “cautiously optimistic” about revenue for the fiscal year and notes that five-year old MySpace has had faster revenue growth than almost any other Internet company.

The full video after the jump:

This happened last Tuesday, but we wanted to make sure you’re aware that Nielsen management, after years of research, has finally come up with an adequate solution to cluttered e-mail inboxes and inefficiency in office environments: control-deleting the reply-to-all button from the messaging software.

In a move that could have come straight from Mike Judge’s Office Space, the company has decided to remove the button from their e-mail program of choice, Microsoft Outlook, affecting all 35,000 employees across the globe. In a memo, republished by Folio, Andrew Cawood, Chief Information Officer for Nielsen Company, writes that the measure will “eliminate bureaucracy and inefficiency”.

I’ve never been a huge fan of the reply-to-all button either, but removing it sure sounds like a very extreme decision, and claiming that it will eliminate bureaucracy and inefficiency is just plain absurd.

Memo after the jump.

This week’s elevator pitch comes from BookGlutton. Although the pitch is long-winded and lacking energy and enthusiasm, it did alert us to this site that is worth checking out.

The World Economic Forum in Davos is finally trying to make its mark in social media at this year’s conference. The organization is unveiling the beta version of its exclusive Facebook-style social networking site, called WELCOM, reserved for high-profile attendees of the World Economic Forum like Mark Zuckerberg, Vladimir Putin and Kofi Annan.

The site, which was designed in partnership with Adobe Systems, BT Innovate and Microsoft, will actually be a pretty nifty way to share ideas between the world’s best and brightest. That is, if world leaders will bother to take the time to contribute to the site and establish profiles. (Don’t count on it).

Startup2Startup, a popular invite-only Silicon Valley networking event, held its 7th get-together last night, bringing 140 entrepreneurs together. The event is the brainchild of Dave McClure, the venerable startup angel investor who recently joined Founders Fund, and the event sponsors include some of the top VCs in the valley.

The monthly event typically consists of a dinner, with an invited speaker or two giving a presentation followed by moderated table-by-table conversations (plus healthy lobby chatter before and afterwords). Startup2Startup brings together three types of startup people: startup rookies and students; entrepreneurs and startup veterans; and investors and experienced corporate employees.

OpenTable, the online restaurant reservation site that was founded in 1998, is hoping to raise as much as $40 million in an IPO, according to a filing with the SEC (embedded below). The prospectus offers a detailed look at the company’s finances and operations.

Revenues through the nine months ended September 30, 2008 were $41.3 million, a 41 percent increase from the same period in 2007. Revenues through the nine months ended September 30, 2008 were $41.3 million, a 41 percent increase from the same period in 2007. The company makes money from the restaurants, which pay both subscription fees (54 percent of revenues) and reservation fees for each diner that shows up through the system (42 percent of revenues). It also makes a small amount on installation fees (4 percent of revenues).

The company lost 149,000 in net income, but turned an operating profit of 261,000. That is a rather slim margin, however, it appears that the company was spending as much as it could to grow and take market share, especially internationally where it is just getting started.

Travelzoo, a publicly traded travel site launched in 1998, has annouced that it purchased the domain “Fly.com” for $1.8 million. According to Travelzoo’s announcement, Fly.com will be the home of “a new information web site to be launched in Feburary”. A visit to the site itself offers a slightly less vague description:

“Fly.com will launch a new travel search engine within the next few weeks that will help you find the best travel options. Please visit us again soon.”

The $1.8 million price tag might sound like a lot (and it is), but pricey domains are nothing new, even in the down economy: Vibrators.com sold for $1 million a few months ago and A&T’s YellowPages.com paid a whopping $3.85 million for YP.com in December. Of course, good domain names are no guarantee for success – let’s hope Fly.com has more behind it than yet another generic travel search engine.

We heard that some MySpace insiders weren’t exactly pleased when new Yahoo CEO Carol Bartz made a subtle jab at MySpace during the Yahoo earnings call earlier this week.

When asked if Yahoo would start to focus on the younger demographic, Bartz responded “So one thing I would say, I want to make sure that we serve the demographic that we have now very, very well. Also what I would tell you, the good news is, that crowd is very finicky. And just as MySpace was extremely hot and then moved over to Facebook, who knows what’s going to come next and who knows whether Yahoo! can grab that property and be successful.”

The press took that quote and ran with it, writing headlines like this one from Reuters: Facebook hotter than MySpace: Yahoo CEO Bartz.

Zazzle, the online shop that lets you order custom-decorated clothing, mugs, and a variety of other items, has laid off nearly 40% 25% of its corporate staff and 15% of the overall company, which includes workers in its manufacturing factory. The corporate office was hit hard, with over 30 28 of 110 employees cut, primarily in business development, marketing, and engineering. Cuts were also made in the company’s factories, which houses 140 workers (some of which are working under contract).

In an official blog post, the company’s founders write that the site has seen strong growth over the past year, but that the sluggish economy forced them to make cuts in order to ensure the company’s continued profitability. The company says it will continue to sell products currently available on the site, but has cut some projects that have yet to appear and will continue to drop products that aren’t performing well.

Update: Chief Product Officer Jeff Beaver says that the Zazzle representative I spoke to earlier was misinformed, and that 28 out of 110 corporate employees were laid off, representing around 25% of the corporate office. He confirmed that 15% of the staff overall had been laid off.

Hey, guys, guess what just came in the mail? The JimmyJane.com Form 6 massager with dual-action for those heard to reach places. I’ll do a full review shortly – WITH PICS! – but here’s a quick unboxing for you all. Note: This is for external use only.

Click through for the safe for work video.

It is early days for HD video on the Web, but already we are starting to see jostling for position in this nascent part of the Web video market. Less than two months after YouTube started streaming high-definition videos in a major way, CEO Chad Hurley is now claiming bragging rights as the biggest HD video site on the Web. At a panel today at Davos, he said:

We feel we have the largest library of HD video on the Internet.

If you look at YouTube’s HD category, five pages with about 100 HD videos come up. Hulu’s HD gallery, in contrast, only has six videos. Vimeo’s HD gallery has 178 videos. But CBS has at least 1,000 (and it is not clear how many of those are on YouTube in HD quality).

Today at Davos, Mike just finished moderating a panel on the Next Digital Experience with Chad Hurley (YouTube), Craig Mundie (Microsoft), Mark Zuckerberg (Facebook), Shananu Narayen (Adobe), Hamid Akhvan (T-Mobile) and Eric Clemons (Wharton). I will put up the video as soon as it is available. (Updated with video).

The wide-ranging discussion focused on how the mobile Web is becoming increasingly important, and in many countries, the primary way people connect to the Internet. A good chunk of the panel was spent talking about the implications of sharing where you are and what you are doing all the time because mobile phones make it easier to do so. Chad Hurley noted that the rate at which YouTube is serving videos to mobile devices is growing at a faster rate than the site as a whole. Mike asked Chad Hurley how long would it be before people started using their mobile phones to upload videos to YouTube in a serious way. Hurley’s response:

Last (and first) time we wrote about Finnish stealth startup Fruugo, we feared that they might be stumbling right before their expected launch at the upcoming SIME conference. The company was rumored to be burning heaps of cash and laying off staff at a rapid pace before an actual product was ever released to the public.

That on itself is extraordinary, considering that Fruugo is assumed to be backed by tens of millions of euros, employs a workforce of around 100 people (they all sign NDAs when they get on board) and its board of directors has been joined by people like Nokia’s former CEO Jorma Ollila, and F-Secure Founder/Chairman Risto Siilasmaa. But Fruugo ended up not launching anything at SIME, building up even more anticipation (or hype, whichever) for their imminent social shopping platform / virtual marketplace.

When we talk about cloud computing, we often talk about a monolithic cloud in the sky. But in fact there are many clouds. There is the Salesforce cloud, the Google cloud, the Amazon cloud, the Microsoft cloud, the Facebook cloud, and so on. For the most part, businesses still need to pick a cloud and stick with it. But that is changing as new applications are developed to combine clouds together.

A new Facebook app from Appirio called ReferMyFriends does just that. (Yes, Salesforce and Facebook can be combined). ReferMyFriends essentially uses Facebook as a front-end for Salesforce. It allows a company’s employees, associates, or even customers to refer their friends on Facebook for open job positions or marketing campaigns.