Web 2.0

Snap vs. "Big Search"

We have all become accustomed to a rather quaint interface for Web search. No matter which major search engine you use, you get a big list of text links on a page, and clicking a link opens a new window with the search results. Is there a better way? The new search engine Snap reminds us that there is.

You still enter a search field in a box on the start page (or in a downloadable toolbar), and you still get a list of results on the next page. The big difference is that Snap gives you a nice big … Read more

Grouper Webcam recorder bypasses your hard drive

I think I've written enough about cell phone-to-Web posting utilities (ShoZu, YouTube Mobile, and ScanR) lately. It's time to cover another way to get video to the Web. This morning video site Grouper is launching a tool that lets you record directly from your PC or Mac Webcam onto the Grouper site. I tried the product yesterday (see my lame video) and found it drop-dead easy to use. Grouper also links directly to Friendster and MySpace (it's yet another company feeding the MySpace beast). After I recorded my video, I had Grouper send it over to my … Read more

Even easier cell phone video and photo uploading with ShoZu

After I wrote about the new YouTube mobile video upload feature, I heard from ShoZu, a company that focuses exclusively on mobile upload utilities. This company isn't about helping you post video to its own site, like YouTube; rather it makes it easy to post video and photos from your cell phone to whatever site you want to use.

For example, the ShoZu mobile app can post directly to your Flickr account, or to Webshots (a CNET company), Textamerica, or Buzznet. Support for other services and blog hosts is forthcoming. ShoZu will also support direct uploading to media sites, … Read more

Simple trip planning for groups

Woe unto you if you ever have the bright idea of coordinating a group vacation among your friends. Getting everybody to agree on a date, a budget, travel arrangements, and an itinerary can be a full-time job. This is why there are travel agents.

It's also why there's the new site, Triporama. This simple service helps coordinate the details involved in putting a small group trip together: who can go, when, where, and how. At the moment the site has the necessary minimum of functionality--you can set up a mailing list, a few private trip-focused discussion boards, and … Read more

Your video audience: quantity vs. quality

Today, YouTube welcomes AOL's Uncut Video [story on TechCrunch] to the morass of sites that host user-created (or user-appropriated) videos. The product looks decent enough, and since it's part of the AOL mothership, it integrates with other AOL properties, such as AIM.

How's a potential online video mogul supposed to pick a site? Partly it depends on how you want people to find your content. If you have a general-interest video and you hope that users will stumble upon it, you want to post on a big site, such as YouTube, AOL, or Google, where huge numbers … Read more