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YouCams: Video chat + social networking

We saw a lot of work and business tools for conferencing and collaboration come out of Under the Radar last week, but what about when you want to have fun? YouCams is a slick little embeddable video, voice, and text-chatting tool that's a mix of fun and business. The entire app runs in Flash, and users can jump in and join a discussion without the need for registration. The tool is aimed at social network users (mainly the MySpace crowd) as a way to communicate and interact with one another. Something that will likely get them blocked from the service, like what happened to competitor Stickam.

If you've used Stickam before, the Webcam functionality is a little similar. And by a little I'm being generous, because YouCams is much more full featured. There are two tiers of service, both free and paid. Basic registration is fairly generous, giving you voice, text, and video broadcasting privileges. Upgrading to the premium level turns YouCams into a full-on conferencing tool, allowing you to video chat with three other users at the same time, and own a personalized URL with the option to host your own conferencing room.

An interesting addition to YouCams is integration with YouTube, and a large variety of widgets. These float around on the interface, and require no extra installation. It feels a little bit like YourMinis. The Space Invaders widget in particular nearly kept me from finishing this post. Likewise the YouTube integration is well done. Video links pop up in a conversation bubble, and won't start until you click on them. Like the widgets, they float around and can be resized on an ad-hoc basis.

There's also a social networking component integrated in the service. Users trade 'stars,' which act as credits to buy into various features. It's an interesting take on user involvement, although I'm not sure it'll catch on until users have a real reason to get involved. Maybe giving them access to premium content like music or movie downloads would be a good hook. In the meantime, casual chatters will likely get a kick out of YouCams for its slick interface and ease of use.

I've embedded a YouCams module after the jump. It might not run if you're using Firefox. We've been in contact with the YouCams team about this, and they're on it.… Read more

Office 2.0: Open for Business

This group of presenters at Under the Radar is focused on tools that let regular people (read: not coders) create Web sites and tools to make things easy for site visitors and customers.

My Payment Network provides small-businesses and education payment systems aimed at cutting administrative costs and the hassle of paper checks. For schools, it's a chance to add an online payment system for things like sports enrollment fees, and equipment costs. For small businesses, it's another way to handle payment processing. My Payment Network is comparable to PayPal, but offers customizable controls for those in charge … Read more

Evening roundup: Viacom sued, MySpace photo albums, Wii browser delayed

Viacom sued over Colbert parody on YouTube. A takedown notice for a parody video clip of The Colbert Report was the cause for a lawsuit against Viacom by the Electronic Frontier Foundation. The video featured several short clips from the popular late-night TV show, along with user-generated content. Viacom said it doesn't mind the video being shown on the service.

MySpace photos upgraded. MySpace rolled out an update to its photo service last night, giving users the option to create albums and manage shots en masse with a batch uploading tool. Size limits on uploaded photos have also doubled … Read more

News roundup: YouTube rival cometh, Tabblo purchased, Kongregator goes public

NBC and News Corp. push new Web rival to YouTube. If you can't beat 'em join 'em, which is what AOL, MSN, Yahoo and MySpace are doing to combat media juggernaut YouTube. The companies have combined forces and are gearing up to launch a new online video service this summer. Besides user-submitted clips, expect to find full-length TV shows and paid-for movies from two major studios. ( CNET News.com)

HP to acquire photo start-up Tabblo. Photo sharing and printing service Tabblo is being acquired by Hewlett-Packard. In our hands-on we noted the ease and simplicity of its built-in printing … Read more

News roundup: Google, Congoo, RateItAll + MuseStorm, Mashtracker

Google rolls out pay-per-action. Google's got a new advertising scheme, and it's set up to help small-time advertisers avoid the dangers of click fraud. Instead of just paying by the click, advertisers can set up predetermined actions the user must go through, such as purchasing an item or browsing a certain section of the site. The new system has sparked controversy in the blogosphere as a potential destroyer of smaller affiliate marketing services.

Congoo launches News Portals. Premium news content distributor Congoo ( previous coverage) has rolled out a customizable single-page-aggregation service that pulls stories from user-selected topics. Users … Read more

Shop by shape, not size

I just heard a presentation on MyShape, a relatively new clothing retail site for women. Its secret sauce: It collects all the measurements of the clothing it carries and puts them into a database, and then asks its consumers to enter in their measurements, from which it builds individual profiles. Each profile gets a shape code, for example, shape S is "curvy front and side profiles." Users can also bypass the measurements and just pick their shape codes from the descriptions on the site.

Once a shopper has her profile in the system, the store only shows clothing … Read more

Web update roundup: Box.net, MySpace, PreFound, Netvibes

Box.net gets new design. Box.net has gotten a face-lift that shows more files and menu choices in the same amount of space. They've also completely gotten rid of the sidebar (which once housed navigation options), and added some neat previews for any photos that have been stored. There's also the option to send any file that's on there to one of your Box.net widgets without having to leave the page. Previous Box.net coverage here.

MySpace partners with Bodog. Online sports gambling, TV, and music service Bodog has partnered with MySpace to tweak the … Read more

Rent out your closet with Store At My House

Everybody's got junk and often not enough room to stow it. When Public Storage is a little out of your price range, there's Store At My House, a new service that matches people who need to store stuff with those who have space for it. You can register to rent out your attic, an extra room, or even a parking space. Entries are displayed on a Google map, and you can sort through listings on a sidebar for whatever type of space is needed. If it's not there, there's a request form for others browse and … Read more

MySpace defeats YouTube in war game

Which business model is likely to be the most successful: MySpace, YouTube, Facebook, or Second Life?

According to a war game played out at London's Business School last week, MySpace wins. But, in a conclusion that was validated by this week's Viacom lawsuit against Google and YouTube for copyright infringement, the participants concluded that both MySpace and YouTube are vulnerable to legal attacks and government regulations that target illegal activities and objectionable content, such as child pedophilia and pornography.

Copyright lawsuits will be a "major distraction at best or they could undermine" the businesses, says Leonard Fuld, president of Boston-based Fuld & Co., which ran the war game. "Sexy and cool as MySpace and YouTube seem, they are prone to attacks."

Meanwhile, the team of students representing MySpace successfully convinced the panel of experts who judged the war game that MySpace has the most viable business strategy among the social network sites. "MySpace won the game by a fairly good margin. They had a much better argument: that content is king," Fuld says. "MySpace won the strategy event...whether it will win the war" is unclear. … Read more

News Roundup: Viacom sues YouTube, MySpace News screens leaked, Microsoft to buy Tellme

Viacom drops $1 billion lawsuit on YouTube. The news came this morning that Viacom is suing Google-owned YouTube for "massive intentional copyright infringement." The suit is due to the repeated viewing of almost 160,000 clips of Viacom-owned content that were hosted on the service. It was only a matter of time before the big lawsuits came from content providers after Google's acquisition of YouTube late last year. It's worth noting that the lawsuit amount is more than half of what Google paid for YouTube in stock in November. ( CNET News.com)

Shots of MySpace News surface. … Read more