I think it’s time that the Web giants of the West clean house and toss away what they don’t absolutely need to accomplish goals set by management. Why? Technological focus of the highly productive sort has given way to competitive hubris, and those two terms should remain exclusive from one another often as possible. Each of the Big Four - Google, Yahoo, Microsoft and AOL - has displayed terrible redundancies in their own way, and needlessly so.

One of the most outstanding examples, perhaps, comes by way of Google. Google purchased YouTube some years aback, and its acquisition, while still not especially profitable, has come to dominate the field of Web video much the same way the company’s own search-advertising duopoly has grown. Still, Google Video survives. To be sure, they each serve different purposes. But why is that, exactly? Why work an ancillary angle? Wouldn’t it have been better to do away with Google Video by now and attend solely to YouTube?

Also, Google purchased Jaiku, a one-time strong competitor to Twitter that promoted itself heavily for the mobile crowd to great effect, but lost considerable ground in the last year do to the ways of popularity contest. What was the reasoning behind Google’s purchase? To get on the microblog wagon, of course. Yet, if the intention was good, Jaiku nonetheless gained little for its parent. So wouldn’t it be best to just…move on? Jaiku’s homepage signifies its status well at present. The announcement of Jaiku’s move into the Googleplex is still write large. Still.

Now, how about the smallest of the four, AOL. Seems innocent enough, trying to make things happen for itself. But perhaps it’s trying too many things, no? From the looks of it, AOL has only a few really solid efforts underway: its AIM service, its radio (plus Last.fm) projects, and its blogging network. Those are what make AOL sit unique from other giants, it seems, and which should be developed with vigor. Everything else appears ancillary. AOL Mail is still strong as far as users go, but in utility, it’s no market leader. Search? Three words: “Enhanced by Google.” Sure, its search and home news page are very much bread and butter to the entire operation, but again, AOL can’t survive forever on aid. It needs to find its own way. It should think less horizontal and more vertical. How best to make its most attractive properties better, in other words.

Microsoft is at this time a peculiar fellow. It has a reasonable amount of traffic, but its ambition may be too much of a fantasy. Google is very dominant in search, and while Microsoft would do well to remain in the game in order to pull in some coin to fund its Live services, to seek a real challenge with the king of the judge seems somewhat fantastical at the moment. Microsoft was hard after Yahoo, but for $44+ billion dollars, it might be better able to condition its own properties to serve users better. And that suite of full-fledged cloud office applications isn’t going to make itself. My last word about Microsoft for now: The company’s expansion of its original deal with Facebook to supply a search box for users something that I think is worth more to Microsoft’s future than doing anything really massive with Yahoo.

Speaking of Yahoo, it is one player that is so unfortunately confused about its plans for the future that it hasn’t yet managed to make an outright killing with its top properties. From far and wide, cries over the unrealized potential of Flickr have droned on and on and on again. Yahoo Mail, besides being visually refreshed, has remained largely unchanged. Yahoo Buzz, something which many consider to have a clear advantage over Digg, if only for its potential audience, is not displayed with any prominence on the Yahoo homepage. The user must select “More Yahoo Services” in order to gain access. For something which can make Yahoo seem more current and appear more content-rich from the get-go, it’s strangely second-tier. For goodness sake, Yahoo still features a link for GeoCities at its topmost domain. Poor prioritization for sure.

Here’s the thing. The roles of Internet giants are understandably difficult to manage. The carnal objective of enormous financial growth, mandated by the companies as well as the starseekers of Wall Street, is a massively tough nut to crack in and of itself, quarter after quarter. Brilliance is hard to repeat, after all, and sometimes there is only so much you can eek out of a particular business. The risk of having a decision deemed stupid and ineffectual by users and subsequently investors as well, is just added pressure that can only be conducive to cautiousness, and not meaningful progress.

Of course, being a giant also has its outstanding benefits. It means that you carry with your name a sizable amount of money, either in assets or in cold hard cash. Which you can experiment with very liberally, particularly in the startup market. But having the option to do so doesn’t necessarily mean you take it.

For a long time I’ve watched the Big Four mozy about and stretch themselves unnecessarily. I’ve seen things boom, bust, and languish to various degrees of boring. Sites and services launched afresh or have been purchased, and something or other has subsequently stagnated as a result. Yet all too often have those burdens been kept afloat. Why that is is a mystery. There’s no reason for it. They’re dead weight, and the sooner one is done with them the better. You have lower amount of vital statistics to watch over, giving you more opportunity to zero in on what really matters to their brands.

The fact is that excess fat is on everyone’s plate, and the more able one becomes at mimimizing one’s weaknesses, the more pronounced one’s strengths may grow. Really, sometimes it is that simple.

Well, it finally happened. If you’ve upgraded to the latest version of iTunes, aka 7.7, you can check out the mythical iPhone App Store, and although you can’t buy anything yet, you’ll at least be able to choose the apps you’ll be spending your precious denaros on. *Update: ok, now you can start spending cash, if you’re so inclined.

As Steve Jobs promised earlier today, there are about 500 applications to choose from at this moment.

The categories for the apps are Business, Education, Entertainment, Finance, Games, Health & Fitness, Lifestyle, Music, Navigation, News, Photography, Productivity, Reference, Social Networking, Sports, Travel, Utilities, and Weather.

At first glance, I’m seeing a lot of games, plus some familiar names, like Twitterific, AIM client, Facebook, MySpace Mobile, Pownce, and Typepad. Most of the applications fall into the 0.99-9.99 dollar category, but some, like PhotoDial, cost as high as 14.99 dollars. The most expensive application I’ve found so far is LionClock Lite, a time tracker that costs a whopping 29.99 dollars. Well, strike that: Netter’s Anatomy Flash Cards and Netter’s Neuroscience Flash Cards - those cool medical apps that were shown when iPhone 3G was unveiled - are 39.99 each. Ouch. Simple applications such as Light, as well as many utilities, are free.

One disappointing category is definitely Navigation, which only contains 11 applications, one of which is Flashlight. Sure, it does help you see where you’re going, but I wouldn’t exactly call it navigation. I sure hope for more applications that will take advantage of iPhone’s shiny new GPS in the (near) future.

The best populated category, by far, is Entertainment, a good portion of which are simple ebooks. There’s also a lot of utilities, but not many fall into the must-have category.

All in all, the app store is populated well, but there’s nothing groundbreaking here; after a couple of days the ratings on the apps will make more sense, so it’ll be easier to choose the really good applications. And, of course, hopefully the developers will swarm to create new stuff so we’ll have a much wider choice soon.

Several more screenshots await after the jump.

Company Name: Cameesa

20 word description: Cameesa is crowdfunded fashion. We are a clothing company run by those who wear it.

CEO’s 100 word description: The idea with Cameesa is to get more people involved in the clothing creation process. We use crowdfunding to let the community decide what we make. The people who find and fund designs (called Supporters) then share in the profits along with the artist. There is no voting or competitions; the community truly has control over what gets made.

Launched in mid-June, Cameesa is a new clothing company hailing from Chicago, where it faces some steep competition from another dominant home team–Threadless. The Cameesa t-shirt company doesn’t necessarily promote designs through a contest, but still requires support for a given design before it can be sold through its online store. The support Cameesa artists gain is instead in the form of micro-investments from individuals.

Give about $20 for each design you support and you’re putting up the money for their Cameesa-approved design to make it to the storefront. It’s a model that’s very similar in theory to Sellaband, which accepts micro-investments from several people and uses the capital towards production costs. The benefit is that these supporters get ongoing revenue from sales and the artist gets to grow their presence (and income).
Some could argue that such a model for fronting money isn’t necessarily worth the rewards, unless sales become scalable on a large scale. As a design needs 50 supporters in order to become an inventory item on Cameesa’s site, each supporter gets 1/50 of the investment amount. The artist himself retains 20% of the profits–after 250 shirts are sold.

The question remains whether or not it’s worth it to artists and supporters in the long run. Part of that answer could be boiled down to promotional options provided by Cameesa, and the drive of both artists and supporters. Some widgets, badges and third-party applications on social media sites could begin to help out towards this end.

Some are clearly promotional blogs, but many seem quite genuine. What celebrity blog would you like to see published?

Actors

Alec Baldwin - Part of The Huffington Post site, the 30 Rock star posts his thoughts on the current political landscape.

Valerie Bertinelli - Currently blogging through the Jenny Craig website about her weight loss.

Zach Braff - The star of Scrubs doesn’t update frequently, but he does post occasional news.

Jackie Chan - The long-time action star updates frequently with photos and thoughts from his travels.

Jenna Fischer - An actress best known for her role as Pam Beesley on The Office blogs on her MySpace page about her life and gives acting tips.

Mariska Hargitay - The Law & Order: Special Victims Unit actress posts occasionally and sometimes has guest bloggers write as well.

Allison Mack - Best known for the role of Chloe on Smallville, Mack uses her blog to keep her fans up-to-date and share her passions in life with them.

Alyssa Milano - Milano, former star of Charmed, has a blog about baseball (linked by her name), and another one on her personal site, Alyssa.com.

David Nykl - The actor who plays Zelenka on Stargate: Atlantis posts frequently about life on the set with lots of behind-the-scenes photos.

William Shatner - The star of Star Trek and Boston Legal posts every few months.

Jodie Sweetin - The former star of Full House blogs for OK! Magazine about her life and losing weight after having her baby.

Athletes

Gilbert Arenas - Posts frequently to his blog on the NBA website.

David Beckham - The LA Galaxy player updates his blog roughly once a week about games he’s played and what he’s up to.

Curtis Granderson - The center fielder for the Detroit Tigers blogs over on ESPN about baseball, life and even the occasional movie review.

Anna Kournikova - The tennis player better known for her looks than her skill, has a blog that mostly promotes her personal appearances and upcoming events.

Pat Neshek - Pitcher for the Minnesota Twins that talks about baseball in general, what it’s like to be recruited, and his love of trading sports trading cards.

Curt Schilling - The pitcher for the Boston Red Sox posts several times a week on average.

Comedians

Roseanne Barr - The comic, actress and writer is a frequent blogger with multiple updates per day sometimes.

Dave Barry - A long time humor columnist, Dave Barry is also an active blogger.

Michael Ian Black - Co-creator of the comedy trio Stella and Wet Hot American Summer actor, Michael Ian Black updates his blog regularly. This one is definitely worth checking out.

Margaret Cho - Cho is best known for her comedy tours, but she is also a copious blogger.

Tom Green - Comic Tom Green, who spoke with us back in June, not only broadcasts video from his house, but he also blogs it.

Rosie O’Donnell - Rosie O’Donnell has been a well-known, and sometimes controversial, blogger for quite a while now.

Miscellaneous

David Byrne - The Talking Heads founding member is also an artist and writer, amongst other things. He updates his blog a few times a month about projects he’s working on, his life, and ideas on current events.

Mark Cuban - Billionaire, owner of the Dallas Mavericks and Dancing With the Stars contestant, Mark Cuban is not shy about sharing his opinions on his blog.

Adam Curry - The former MTV VJ and huge podcasting advocate blogs daily on his site.

Paris Hilton - The actress/singer/model blogs on her MySpace account from time to time, mostly to clear up rumors about herself.

James Lipton - The writer, executive producer and host of Bravo TV’s “Inside The Actor’s Studio” posts about his work on the show and the entertainment industry.

Joseph Mallozzi - Works on Stargate:Atlantis, but finds time to post extremely long posts from the set almost daily.

Ronald D. Moore - One of the men behind the current Battlestar Galactica, he blogs about all sorts of things.

Jamie Oliver - The television chef blogs frequently as well as occasionally moblogging.

RuPaul - The well-known drag queen/singer/actor and more has been blogging regularly since 2001.

Martha Stewart - The Domestic Diva talks about her personal life, what’s going on behind-the-scenes, and more.

Donald Trump - Focused on his Trump University brand, this blog features a mixture of posts from Trump as well as his staff.

Musicians

Lily Allen - One of the favorite subjects of many gossip blogs, Ms. Allen uses her MySpace blog to dispel rumors about herself, talk about her new music and whatever is going on in her life.

Barenaked Ladies - The entire band posts to their blog.

Thomas Dolby - While it would be easy to make a “he blinded us with blogging!” joke, we’ll try to avoid it as we tell you the well known musician is a frequent blogger.

MC Hammer - It seems MC Hammer is everywhere all over the web, and on his blog he’s tackling just about every subject you can think of.

John Mayer - John Mayer talks about everything from recording his latest music to what his current favorite gadgets are.

Moby - Well known musician Moby has been running his blog since 2000.

Gene Simmons - Known as much for his reality show as his band, KISS, Gene Simmons blog is frequently updated.

Nikki Sixx - The Motley Crue and Sixx:A.M. bassist updates his fans via his blog every so often.

Kanye West - the popular hip hop artist and producer updates his blog regularly, mostly with pictures and videos that have to do with music, fashion and design.

News

Daryn Kagan - A former correspondent for CNN who now does daily blogging about positive news stories.

Meredith Viera - Host of Today and Who Wants To Be A Millionaire is blogging through iVillage.

Brian Williams - Posts on a fairly regular basis to the NBC blog, The Daily Nightly.

Writers

Peter David - Comic book writer and novelist, Peter David has been blogging since 2002 on a very regular basis.

Neil Gaiman - Mr. Gaiman is a comic book writer/novelist/television creator who has been blogging for quite some time.

William Gibson - The well-known author of Neuromancer has been blogging on his site since 2003.

Danny Rubin - The writer of the film Groundhog Day still hears about it so much that he started a blog to answer questions and discuss the philosophy of the movie.

Kevin Smith - Writer and director of such movies as Clerks and Chasing Amy only started seriously blogging in 2005, but has been prolific ever since.

ROCKETON is a new, downloadable avatar service that lets you use the entire Web as your virtual world. If you like Weblin, then you’ll like ROCKETON — the underlying concepts are very similar. You create an avatar, and let it journey with you as you surf the Web. Currently ROCKETON is in private alpha, but I got early access to the site in order to check it out. Below is my journey as a ROCKETON avatar:

Hour 1

Downloaded the ROCKETON application. Easy, quick. I found myself on the ROCKETON launch pad, where all the newbies come to play. Here, you customize your avatar, and finish registering your account. The custom options were pretty basic in terms of the type of outfit I could choose, or the hairstyle I wanted, and that’s when I realized why most of the avatars on the launchpad were wearing the same thing. Details like color, however, can be changed.

Even though it was quick and easy to set up, my first impression of ROCKETON was reminiscent of my first experience with Second Life, when you’re left in a virtual environment full of users that are as clueless as you are. That soon changed.

After getting my avatar customized, I noticed a sleek menu at the bottom left corner of my browser. This had just about everything I needed to play with ROCKETON. Here, you can “hide” your avatar and the ROCKETON menu, see the top sites where avatars are visiting, view all of your info (profile, rank, points, preferences, etc.), change your avatar, access your store, buy points, trade items, view friends and play games with other users.

Read Bill’s entire e-mail here, it’s worth it.

The e-mail is fascinating for two reasons. First one is the fact that it’s such a genuine complaint, although it’s coming from Bill Gates. Had I or anyone else written the same thing, I bet there would be commenters who would proclaim us ignorant, lazy, or both. When it comes from Bill, well, it’s hard to pull that argument because he’s obviously not biased against Microsoft, he’s not lazy, and he’s not ignorant: he’s biased in favor of Microsoft, and he’s trying hard to do something with one of their products, but he cannot because - simply put - it sucks.

Searchme, a visual Web search service whose utility has been exclusive to static Web page browsing, is now able to deliver both standard link search as well as content found on Flickr and YouTube. Clips can be played back directly within the Searchme environment.

These additions alone are likely to garner good reviews, and rightly so. They are key evolutionary enhancements that make Searchme all the more valuable to the average user whose interest in digital media has increased handily in the last few years. Of course, an expansion in the number of bridges to image and video sources is certainly something for the service’s developers to deliver in the future. But considering the positions of Flickr and YouTube in their respective markets, today’s offerings will likely suffice for many browsers.

Yet that is not all that has improved with Searchme. Another feature has been brought to light as well. The name is Search Stacks, and its function exists across the spectrum of search options. It offers users the option to bookmark anything and everything found on the Web through Searchme in quite elegant, drag-and-drop fashion. Searchme’s video demonstration (shown below) of this process exemplifies its use well. Just grab something, and pull it into the top right corner of the page. Choices to organize such saves are available, so if you’re working on several projects, you can divvy accordingly.

Bookmarking for bookmarking’s sake may not be enough to convince the user to linger and build a library of pages, clips, and images. Understandably so. But the ability to share collections by way of email, blog embeds, as well as postings to social networks like Facebook and MySpace, with little effort, is really very intriguing

YourCause is a network for connecting users with non-profit organizations and others looking to make a positive difference. It does so by creating a community where users can choose a cause and promote it by creating their own dedicated Web page for it. It’s up to the individual users to help promote their personal dedication to a particular cause, which is connected to the charity itself via YourCause.

In order to make this connection, YourCause has partnered with Network for Good (sponsored by its founding partners AOL, Yahoo, and Cisco), in order to make sure that donations are securely processed. So when a user joins YourCause, they can create a cause, describe why they’re passionate about this cause, and then choose from YourCause’s list of related charities that are currently accepting donations.

In some ways YourCause becomes a marketing platform for non-profits that would like to look to social media for more personal ways in which to get their message across–through another individual’s support. When you create a cause, you’re creating a Web page that contains information about yourself and the charity you support. It’s through this Web page that your cause is promoted to your own social graph, and other users on YourCause.

There are two plan levels for YourCause that you can use for this promotion: the free plan lets you have a basic page within the YourCause network while the premium plan (about $10 per month) gives you a publishing platform to share blog entries, photos and videos, while also tracking donations, offering an email marketing system and an e-commerce store. Some of these features aren’t yet live, but will all be part of the premium package offering.

With the premium plan, you truly become a marketing tool for an individual charity, and if you’re a vested member of this charity (granted it’s offered through YourCause) then you may be interested in such a premium plan offering However, there are a number of sites that connect individuals with worthy causes, and offer a number of free tools that are comparable to those that YourCause has as part of the premium package deal. Another potential downfall of YourCause is the limitation of users to support only one cause at a time. You can switch your supported causes, but your profile can currently only be attached to one charity. So choose carefully.

With the move, CNBC is also touting the ability to access real-time quotes on the network’s mobile site, in case you have so much money that you need to keep up with your stocks in real-time on the go. Meanwhile, Google notes that you can now use their Finance portfolio gadget to track your stocks in real-time if you use iGoogle as your start page.

This is all made possible through a new product from the NYSE dubbed appropriately enough NYSE Realtime Stock Prices. The NASDAQ product for real-time quotes is called NASDAQ Last Sale.

Yahoo Finance, which still maintains a healthy lead in the space, has had real-time NYSE quotes up-and-running since earlier this month through their partnership with Bats Trading.

MeeMix, internet radio site somewhat similar to Pandora, lets you quickly find new music you like. It goes one step further than Pandora, though, and lets you create custom stations which can be shared with other users within the MeeMix network. Also, unlike Pandora, it currently works outside of the US, which might turn out to be a killer feature as many Pandora fans have been left high and dry because of licensing issues.

MeeMix will also start giving artists a chance to customize their personal MeeMix page. They will be able upload their music to the site themselves, create their own profile as well as widgets (which will work on social networking sites such as MySpace) with various stats on their music. In turn, they get notified of new fans and comments, as well as new stations based on their music; they also get statistics about their fanbase.

Obviously, these features are aimed at upcoming artists that’ll probably welcome the possibility to customize their own profile pages and get stats about their listeners.

Here’s how all this sounds in marketingese, courtesy of CEO Gilad Shlang: “We offer a unique opportunity for musicians to connect more broadly with their fan base. Since discovery is a great part of the MeeMix experience, we want artists to reach brand new audiences based on their musical style and sound. Let the music come to potential fans rather than having fans search for music.”

*Update: the artist registration just went live and can be accessed here.

The ascent of the iTunes Store has been consistently touted as industry-changing, and not without reason. In the past five years, the Web-based marketplace for downloadable media has gone from startup size to one which, not very long after launch, began to tally sales in the billions, and soon made its big media partners grow hesitant of its influence on music sales and associated pricing controls.

Despite the music industry’s overt promotion of competitors, however, the iTunes Store has remained the biggest selling online storefront in the digital market. And today Apple is heralding one more milestone in the growth of the iTunes Store, marking the passage of the five-billionth song sold. There’s really no mystery as to why the iTunes Store continues to be the outstanding leader in the digital download arena. The company’s iTunes-plus-iPod/iPhone infrastructure still greatly simplifies media consumption, arguably more so than any other competitor.

The retailer often recognized as the next most substantial force in digital music sales, Amazon, has made remarkable headway in its effort to encroach on Apple’s dominance, but though the majority of the iTunes song catalog has been relegated to a technologically unappealing position laden with DRM and distributed with inferior audio quality, the storefront moves forth apace.

What’s more, Apple has today also divulged that the iTunes Store, following its recent introduction of movie purchases and rental options for newly released titles from several Hollywood studios, is now regularly distributing over 50,000 movies per day. Surely, if one were to juxtapose that figure against Netflix’s own statistics one might sense iTunes to be a virtual non-competitor. But placed against the budding market of download centers, which includes, among others, Amazon Unbox, Apple claims iTunes to be “the world’s most popular online movie store.”

Apple does not explicitly state an independent market researcher for its daily movie download figure, but suffice it to say that the figure of 50,000+ will gain perhaps as much attention as that recorded for sales of audio tracks upon further scrutiny. Movie downloads are an increasingly hot topic for market analysts, given the amount of piracy conducted over the Web, as well as in physical form. And with ISPs’ concerns over network data traffic, plus the costs required for consumers to opt into the habit of downloading movies on-demand from non-cable or satellite providers, many observers will likely peg iTunes first official statistic for movie sales and rentals as either good news or bad for the fate of the premium video download movement.

The movement presently involves material from film studios, television networks, and independent, Internet-born producers. Theoretically speaking, 50,000 movie rentals and purchases per day would amount to 18.25 million if maintained for an entire year, give or take any fluctuations in demand.

But there’s a site that is trying to change the online fashion world. It’s called StyleShake and it might just be every woman’s dream come true. StyleShake lets anyone be their own fashion designer by allowing them to choose the fabrics they want and create their dream outfit. All you have to do is input your exact measurements and you’re good to go. The dress, top or skirt is designed by you and made to fit only you.

Too good to be true? It gets better. StyleShake guarantees that you will be wearing your new outfit in 10 working days. This is possible thanks to Lectra, a digitizing measure service that enables the rapid creation of patterns for all types of garments.

StyleShake has taken the classic female hassle of endlessly searching for clothes that fit their complex body type and solved the solution through a do-it-yourself design studio.

“I could never find something I really liked,” said Iris Ben-David, CEO of StyleShake. “Whenever I went on a shopping spree it would take ages to find what I wanted. Then one day I thought ‘Why can’t I do it myself?’”

It only took a matter of time before StyleShake was created and quickly producing dozens of personalized designs for women around the world. From the very start, StyleShake has been aimed at providing the best designer-quality clothing in addition to making each garment individually tailored to the user and sold at a price that could be affordable.

You snap a picture of a beautiful sunset on the beach during your trip to Southern California. You upload it to Facebook or Flickr. Next thing you know, the picture is public for use and anyone can right-click their way to ownership of your photo.

There is nothing wrong with this scenario. It happens all the time. But for photographers who are serious about owning their own pictures and images, there is a new site currently in private beta that might be the answer to your online photo-sharing troubles.

Photrade.com is a new photography website that lets users share, protect, and make money from their photos. It combines the sharing functionalities of sites like Flickr, iStock and Smug Mug but also lets the photographer generate ad revenue.

Photrade’s “Adcosystem” advertisements are placed strategically over images so that bloggers or publications that use them get free legally licensed pictures while photographers make money when their work is used on the internet. Plus, the service makes it so that the image with the ad is a single jpeg without using flash or java.

At first glance, I must say that Photrade underlines the phrase “Do not judge a website by its homepage.” It’s design is nothing out of the ordinary, but its services are worth a second look. Compared to other stock photography websites, Photrade offers a very complete set of features including a platform to sell stock, earn ad revenue, protect photos, and use custom watermarking.

If you’re interested in protecting your images in the same way you protect your written work or original music, Photrade is just the site to visit. Likewise, if you are a blogger who is afraid of taking random photos from Google Image searches and would rather purchase legally licensed images, then Photrade is also worth a look.

AOL has just launched AIM Money, a revenue-share program for developers of applications for the company’s instant messaging software. The program was first announced back in March, when AOL first launched their expanded developer platform: Open AIM 2.0. To start generating revenue, developers insert ads from AOL into their applications. At the moment, the focus is on display advertising, with the inventory being sold by AOL’s Platform-A division.

In conjunction with the AIM Money launch, AOL has also released AIM 6.8. The new release looks to give application developers increased exposure inside of the AIM software, adding a “Get More” tab where users can grab applications and add-ons.

While launch partners include BlogTV and Phonevite, other developers can get their applications considered for inclusion by checking out a new feature of AIM that is also part of the Open AIM API called “mini-applications.”

Aside from the Open AIM news, the company is clearly moving full speed ahead with its newly formed AOL People Networks division, which was established after closing the acquisition of Bebo last month. Joanna Shields, formerly President of Bebo and now President of the new division, says in the release:

“AIM Money is now giving them a way to easily monetize their applications as they continue to develop new and innovative AIM-based Web experiences.”

Sounds like something we may soon see on Bebo as well, as AOL looks to monetize all of its newly acquired ad inventory under the Platform-A umbrella.

We’ve been barraged with news from services announcing iPhone applications to accompany the iPhone 3g revealing today, and we’re passing the good fortune along to you. The latest to create an iPhone app to take advantage of the new toy is Phanfare.

This recently funded pho iPhone 3g Bandwagon to-sharing site doubles as a storage and distribution service, and the new iPhone application gives you one-click mobile access to its core features. Photo albums can be created and caption can be added to images directly on your iPhone with the Phanfare app, and then sent off to your accompanying Phanfare account on the web.

Photos are actually taken with the Phanfare application, with the built-in camera tool, which streamlines the process. This means that photos are saved with Phanfare, and accessed on your Phanfare account. The idea behind this all is to remove the PC, as if it were a middleman, in the photo-sharing process. Phanfare wants you to consider your iPhone as you would any other digital camera–except it can send photos out to friends and family.

Once you’ve taken a photo and it’s sent to your web account, it can then be shared with family and friends, as well as through your Facebook application. This distribution to friends and family across the web appears to be automated, based on your settings, through the new iPhone application. In addition to the new iPhone application, Phanfare has also optimized image viewing for the iPhone, using the Safari browser.

Disney, the media and theme park giant responsible for franchising all manner of things real and animated, announced today an expansion of its media offerings on its Xtreme Digital (XD) online network. In conjunction with its 2008 summer movie broadcast schedule for its ABC television network, Disney has introduced a staged rollout of full-length movie streams to Web viewers following their original showing on the Wonderful World of Disney on Saturday nights.

The company is currently displaying “Finding Nemo,” with “Monsters Inc.,” “Haunted Mansion,” “Confessions of a Teenage Drama Queen,” “Princess Diaries 2,” “Freaky Friday,” and “Peter Pan” to follow on successive weeks. While ABC networks are said to only show movies on Saturday nights, visitors to the XD website will be given the opportunity to view the abovementioned weekly picks on demand the full week after they’re aired, Monday through Friday.

Disney XD, part of the Disney Online division, has, since its debut last May, been conditioned rather well to provide a sizable amount of entertainment for its users. It hosts everything from video clips to games to kid-friendly networking. And this week’s debut of free film streams will likely only add to its allure for the increasingly Web-connected Disney fan club.(The company is also well invested in Club Penguin, a child-oriented virtual networking environment which it purchased in 2007 to the tune of $700 million.)

With young children up to teen age spending more and more time online, building digital characters, playing virtual house, and spending a good amount of parental dollars, there’s definite reason to build greater value into its website. And with movies making up a substantial segment of Disney’s annual revenue stream, it seems only sensible that the company introduce its catalogue to Web viewers, particularly in an environment which packs so many additional functions and services as XD. Movies are just one more piece of the puzzle to get and maintain hold of visitors’ attention.

Of course, Disney isn’t making available with one-click access all of its DVD lineup. It’s only presenting a single movie per week, which is replaced by another as each Monday of the season-specific Wonderful World of Disney event rolls around. But the company’s attempt to fix its release of content to the Web to a schedule may allow XD to maintain a sort of consistency throughout the summer that it can keep long past the departure of WWD broadcasts.