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StumbleUpon’s New Explore Feature Lets You Stumble Specific Topics

StumbleUpon social discovery tool has inspired 25 billion of clicks on the pages of leading people through great songs like "art" or "fashionable." Now is giving recommendations to a more specific level, with a new feature launched Wednesday. With the "Explore Box," users may encounter related pages with hundreds of thousands of specific issues - such as Vincent Van Gogh - instead of working in some 500 established categories - like art - that has stuck in the past to StumbleUpon . It's like a search engine and "best of" list had a child. If StumbleUpon has not ordered the exact term you are looking for, will match you with the next best thing.




At this time the function is limited to a small search bar on the browser of the product. But despite the minimal presence on the web is a huge change for StumbleUpon.

In the future, says StumbleUpon CEO Garrett Camp, StumbleUpon Box Explore integrate technology with its monitoring function so that users may encounter a mix of general and specific topics. That will make the engine much more personal discovery, and eventually (though the camp says no, probably in the short term) will allow advertisers to target closer to StumbleUpon your ads.

"We had to rewrite, basically, the recommendation engine," said camp Mashable. "Although it seems a lot of work into a feature, which will have an impact throughout the experience."

Skype App Lets You Pay for Wi-Fi by The Minute at 1 Million Hotspots

You can now use Skype credit to pay for Wi-Fi on the iPhone or iPad. The phone giant launched the Internet "Skype WiFi" Wednesday at the Apple Store, an application that lets you connect to more than 1 million Wi-Fi hotspots worldwide - and only pay for the minutes you use . Unlike services like Boingo access point (which powers mobile Skype Wi-Fi), which require a daily pass or a monthly subscription, Skype charges for Wi-Fi Wi-Fi users per minute. Access rates starting at $ 0.06 per minute, but can be longer depending on the supplier. The service has previously been available for laptops under the name "Skype Access."



Why would anyone want to pay online if they have a mobile phone with a data plan? A blog about the new feature, Skype suggests it might be useful to avoid data roaming charges abroad. We might add that it is very useful when your iPhone 3G signal is weak, and you want to download an email vital.

If you find mobile access to pay per minute Wi-Fi tempting, try the application for free this weekend - August 20 and 21 - 60 minutes.

YouTube Gives Music Publishers Ads on Fan-Made Videos

Thanks to a new deal between YouTube and the National Music Publishers Association (NMPA) and its subsidiary The Harry Fox Agency (HFA), music publishers and songwriters will start getting money when their songs are used in the fan-made videos.
According to a YouTube blog post, the 46,000 music publishers HFA now be able to license their music for use by YouTube users. Every time a filmmaker add a song to work (for example, a fan video professing undying love for Justin Bieber), an ad to play off the vine, scoring publishers and composers of money.



Content Identification System from YouTube - which allows the video-sharing site to identify songs videos - is used to locate appropriate content.

Previously, YouTube only ran ads next to music videos when copyright holders for both sound recording and composition allows the site to do so. Now, more artists will be able to reap the benefits.