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Part social network and part 3D virtual world, Kaneva also throws in a dash of YouTube, with media sharing for pictures and Flash video. I received news of the service today, but Kaneva has been kicking about since late 2004. Essentially you begin with a standard social-network profile, then earn prestige points to work your way up a site leaderboard until you're invited to join the 3D social world, which launched its beta in April of last year.

Points are given as rewards for adding content to your profile and interacting with other Keneva members. Once you join the … Read more

>> Senator to propose surveillance of illegal images. John McCain wants to give surveillance duty to your Internet service provider and to Web sites to crack down on child pornography. All questionable images would be flagged and sent to the authorities with your IP address. (CNET News.com)

>> Flip launches. Conde Nast's answer to MySpace and other social networks. The service, aimed at teenage girls, lets you create a scrapbook of sorts in the form of a flip book. Your flip book can then be shared on other services. (Mashable)

>> Gmail leaves beta. Lately … Read more

Wait, we've heard this before, haven't we? MyBlogLog (recently acquired by Yahoo) shows you who is viewing a Web page when you visit it. It's a really interesting app, but can be quite creepy.

A similar idea: Me.dium, which is launching its new "semi-public beta" at Demo 07 (which means it's an open beta, but new signups could be shut down at any time). Like MyBlogLog, Me.dium shows you who else is on the site you're on. It also shows you where your friends are hanging out online. And it shows … Read more

My-Currency.com, launching at Demo 07 on Thursday, is a complicated solution to a very simple problem: people can't tell if real estate agents are any good.

My-Currency is designed to bust through friends' recommendations and real-estate advertising campaigns in order to help you find the agents with the best knowledge of their market, as shown by how well they predict the outcomes of real estate transactions.

The site is built around a prediction market. It asks agents to predict how much properties will sell for. Agents "wager their reputation," and put in their predicted sales price … Read more

Mashable, the blog about social networks, launched Mashcodes last week, a sister site devoted to HTML codes for MySpace, blogs, and other social networks that support custom code. The move complements Mashable's coverage of these sites, and Mashcodes is easier to navigate and has fewer annoying ads than competing MySpace code sites like MyProfilePimp and MySpace-Codes.com.

The first thing I wanted to do after joining MySpace was get custom code for my profile. To my surprise, nearly all of the sites I pulled up on a casual Google search had a ton of pop-ups, off-site links, annoying ads, … Read more

MyStrands provides event goers with an easy way to interact with their surroundings using their mobile phones. The derivative of PartyStrands got a substantial update this week. The service (which we covered in November) has rolled out a few new tools for users to host similar features in their own homes.

MyStrands now lets you pull from Napster's music library to host music for parties. Users can browse through Napster tracks using the MyStrands app and play any full song for free up to three times, without actually having to use Napster. There's also an indie-artist radio player, … Read more

PowerSnap is a small and free Windows application that merges photos on your home computer with those on the Web photo service Flickr. Its purpose is simple: provide users with a way to view and manage all their photos, online and off.

PowerSnap has a Flash-based interface that lets you navigate, tag, and arrange your photos. It's similar to what you'd get with most photo browsing applications (see iPhoto or Picasa). What sets PowerSnap apart is its Flickr-user tracking, which essentially lets you create RSS feeds for Flickr members. You can add as many Flickr usernames as you … Read more

The Swiss company Pat Says Now deserves attention just for its name, which always reminds us of Right Said Fred. (Who knew they were still around? We were sure they were a one-hit wonder.)

Anyway, Pat Says Now has drawn even more attention to itself with the "Diamond Flower," which it describes as "the world's most expensive computer mouse" at more than $24,000. We'd be afraid to make that claim, given all the insane bling on the personal technology market, but it does have 59 diamonds accenting an 18k white gold casing with … Read more

My first run-in with Spymac was a completely accidental encounter a few years ago. I was pleasantly surprised to discover a site that had its own visual style and appeal. It pulled in some design cues from Apple but kept its own sense of personality. This week Spymac has relaunched itself as Leapfrog, a portal for user-generated media.

The old Spymac featured a variety of user services, including e-mail, blogs, and user forums. It was a community-driven site. The new Spymac Leapfrog is all about media. Think YouTube with Google's pastel color palete. Users can browse popular videos, pictures, … Read more