On Friday YouTube unveiled a new feature for the holidays that lets users create hosted video cards to send to friends and family. Users can select this option from any YouTube video, or from a special page that houses selected community videos and links to a user's own clips. There's also an option to make a personalized greeting straight from a connected Web cam. When finished picking the video there are a handful of themes that house the video player, along with space to add up to 230 characters of text, both of which can be sent up to...
Google today announced that it is adding magazines to its lineup for Google Book Search. These magazines include publications like Popular Science and New York Magazine, but also more obscure publications like the Bulletin of Atomic Scientists. In the long run, Google expects to add search results from these magazines to its main Google.com search results. It is not clear if Google struck a deal with specific publishers to allow for this, but the selection of included magazines still feels a bit uneven and leaves out quite a few well known publications like Time, Newsweek, and Wired. Sponsor For the...
The New York Times has rolled out a new feature that sees it linking out on its front page. Times Extra adds related links from across the web using BlogRunner, the blog meme tracking service the Times acquired last year. As much as any one would appreciate a link on the front page of NYTimes.com, the links are displayed using a js embed, so unfortunately would appear to be blind to search engines. Although linking out won’t fix the financial mess at the NY Times, it’s good to see them leading the way in linking out to other content,...
Gyronix, the developer of GyroQ, a marvelous tool for capturing ideas and automating the process of adding them to your MindManager maps, has just released an even more powerful version 2, which offers MindManager 8 and Mindjet Connect compatibility, and adds several new tagging and map building enhancements. GyroQ 2 is now MindManager 8 and Mindjet Connect compatible, which means you can easily send your tasks and ideas to any map, whether it’s stored locally on your computer or within a Mindjet Connect workspace. It’s nice to see a developer supporting this extended mapping environment! New “send to project” tagging:...
MySpace has partnered with RipCode to give mobile users access to MySpace videos. The content will be available at MySpace’s mobile site, m.myspace.com, which currently generates around 3 billion monthly page views from 10 million users. Video will work on the iPhone, T-Mobile G1, BlackBerry Bold and BlackBerry Storm devices, among others. All user uploaded videos (meaning videos that a user has uploaded, as opposed to all videos uploaded by all users) and most premium content will be available. The new feature will use RipCode’s on demand video transcoding service. Videos are transcoded only when requested, into whatever combination of...
Designer Sait Alanyali is a proud Mac Mini user. So proud that he designed his own. One of the problems he has with the current machine are the I/O ports. It’s a hassle to plug things in and take them out. Hence the “V” shape. It puts the ports within reach while keeping cables tidy. The shape also comes in handy by improving cooling as air moves freely through the heatsink. Hard drives are hot swappable with a 2.5″ hd installed and an empty slot to use any way you like. It also features an HDMI port and does away...
Nintendo's latest handheld gaming device, the DSi, has already sold more than 500,000 units in Japan during its first month on sale. — Kotaku Apple's new In-Ear Headphones With Remote and Mic are finally available to order on the Apple website. — Gizmodo Laptop Cop has a new feature — Lojack location service! Now a browser add-on will broadcast the location of your laptop if it ever gets stolen. — TechCrunch Here's some helpful advice for all of you iPhone owners. If you plan on traveling internationally this holiday season, make sure to turn your data roaming button off. —...
Animoto, the impressive startup that automatically generates high quality music videos from a set of photos, has unveiled a new feature for the holiday season that will allow users to append any of their videos with a holiday intro/outro movie and a snow-themed backdrop, making for a perfect holiday eGreeting. To activate the special holiday look, just click on the ‘Santa’ button beneath any video. Of course, you’ll have to come up with photos suitable for the holiday season yourself - Animoto will just make them look festive. We’re big fans of Animoto - the site may not offer...
A new feature of the MSN Music Channel in the UK, Unsigned will showcase upcoming bands and provide music industry advice. How to submit material - Each month, the team at MSN Music will select acts to be viewed and downloaded by 5.4 million MSN UK users. The bands with the best submissions will also have their very own profile page built by Microsoft. Interested artist should submit videos via Soapbox. Artists can also submit tracks to be featured on a monthly Unsigned Podcast. MSN Unsigned will also feature interviews with key music industry figures and upcoming bands....
A good article by Brad Stone at the NY Times entitled “Facebook aimes to extend its reach across the web”. Brad talks about Facebook Connect: Facebook Connect, as the company’s new feature is called, allows its members to log onto other Web sites using their Facebook identification and see their friends’ activities on those sites. Like Beacon, the controversial advertising program that Facebook introduced and then withdrew last year after it raised a hullabaloo over privacy, Connect also gives members the opportunity to broadcast their actions on those sites to their friends on Facebook. This is beginning to sound like...
All day today, I was looking forward to two closely-related things: sitting down at home to watch an inexpensive movie with my wife, and then rolling out a post saying Apple had missed out on revenue from the Gray household, as a new expanded relationship with TiVo and Amazon Unbox had us renting two films from that service instead of iTunes. But after two hours of watching substandard video with jagged starts and stops and visual artifacts throughout the film, it just reinforced our decision to go with the brand that represents quality. Despite the fact we only paid $.99...
My RSS reader is buzzing with a lot hype around Facebook's Connect this morning. The lead story seems to be the New York Times article entitled Facebook Aims to Extend Its Reach Across the Web which announces that a number of popular sites are about to adopt the technology. The article is excerpted below Facebook Connect, as the company’s new feature is called, allows its members to log onto other Web sites using their Facebook identification and see their friends’ activities on those sites. Like Beacon, the controversial advertising program that Facebook introduced and then withdrew last year after...
Since Facebook announced its Demographic Restrictions feature in August, developers have been eager to take advantage of the new functionality (and simultaneous policy change) allowing them to target of-age users with advertising related to alcohol sales. However, since the new policy went into effect three weeks ago, some developers are experiencing challenges with Facebook’s implementation of Demographic Restrictions that are limiting their ability to derive revenues from the new feature. Here’s how one top developer put it in a recent email to Inside Facebook: <fb:restricted-to location=”us” type=”alcohol”> excludes users who have chosen to hide their year-of-birth from their friends even...
Ready to block out the next ten hours of your life? Coudal Partners, a brilliant online publishing house from Chicago, has a mind-blowing new feature on their site called MoOM: the Museum of Online Museums. I was going to post a specific museum, instead of the whole list, but how in god's name can you choose between the Airline Spoons of the World museum (Gulf Air pictured above), the Museum of Generic Mac and Cheese Packaging, and the Gallery of Sega Start-Up Logos? They're mostly artifact collections, which means instant design inspiration. That is, if you really need a...
Geezeo, an online financial management service, announced Wednesday that it has expanded its Marketplace to include ratings of online brokerage firms. According to the company, visitors can now evaluate brokerage firms based on the initial investment required to sign up for an account, associated fees related to stocks, and the overall experience of using the service. "Geezeo is all about helping our community of users save and make money," Peter Glyman, Geezeo co-founder, said in a statement. "The addition of the Brokerage Marketplace will provide another resource for our users to find the best investment products to help them...
After a brief look back at the original taskbar in Windows 1.0 (Windows turned 20 this month), the Engineering Windows 7 blog dug deep into the enhanced features of the Windows 7 taskbar in its most recent entry.A More Visual TaskbarThe Windows 7 taskbar now features large icons, support for Aero Glass, and no text, and when a window is maximized, the taskbar and the window's title bar no longer turn opaque and dark. Smarter Program Launch Options Windows 7 no longer has separate taskbar and Quick Launch buttons for applications, avoiding duplications. Right-click a button on the taskbar, and you...
