space

YouTube one-ups MySpace, launches political 'Spotlight' service

YouTube has announced a new series on content for political candidates, called Spotlight. Candidates will be able to ask the YouTube community a question and monitor comments and video responses sent in from users. They'll then get a chance to respond to the group discussion later in the week. The goal is to provide an open forum for users to know candidates a little better, and for people to ask questions directly--an option that's historically been out of reach (outside members of the press or those involved in campaign events). The project is also taking advantage of a … Read more

MySpace blocks Photobucket embeds--what's next?

This morning, MySpace quietly blocked Photobucket content from user profiles, a move that cuts out a reported 25 to 30 percent of Photobucket's 17 million monthly users from sharing content on the popular social network. Photo slide shows and video embeds are completely blocked, including those edited using the remix tool we covered in March.

The move came under the guise of Photobucket users posting ad content in their embeds, a move that's expressly forbidden in MySpace's user agreement. Previous MySpace blocks include Stickam, Revver and Imeem.

The big question is what major service MySpace will decide … Read more

MySpace launches Quicktime trailers competitor, sort of

MySpace quietly launched Trailer Park this morning, a new area showcasing trailers for upcoming movies. All videos are played on the in-house MySpace player and can be embedded on member pages. Trailer Park is launching with five trailers from Lionsgate, Warner Bros., Independent, and Buena Vista Pictures.

The page is designed to feel like a member's profile, with forums, a friends list, and a comment board. The dearth of actual content about a movie (actors, ratings, and so on) can be found at the movie's marketing site, which gets its own link alongside the trailer.

Unfortunately, from the … Read more

A dishwasher for the dishwasher-less apartment?

Yes, to many of you this will look stupid. But if you're an urban apartment-dweller like me, there's a good chance that you saw this gadget and immediately said "OMIGOD, I NEED THAT." Our suburban brethren often don't realize that many apartments in New York, San Francisco, London, Tokyo, etc. don't have dishwashers due to space constraints. As a result, we've become very well acquainted with every brand of dish soap on the market (hello, Method Home!), the merits of relying on take-out Chinese food, as well as the deep drama involved in … Read more

MySpace gets political

MySpace is set to launch a voting platform for the presidential primaries early next year, allowing MySpace users to submit a mock vote for their favorite candidate. While the results won't actually count as real votes for election into office, candidates will no doubt try to win the coveted title of MySpace's people's choice winner. There's already a list up on MySpace's Impact page, where 11 of the candidates have thumbnail links to their MySpace profiles.

MySpace has more than 100 million registered users, with around 230,000 new ones each day. The prospect of … Read more

Space: The Boston Marathon's new course

Astronaut Sunita L. Williams wouldn't miss the Boston Marathon for anything. Even if she's not on planet Earth.

As luck would have it, space is where Williams will be on April 16, the date of the 2007 Boston Marathon. She'll be competing anyway.

According to the Associated Press, Williams is registered for the Boston Marathon and will compete by running on a treadmill in the International Space Station.

Although Williams will be the first person to run the Boston Marathon in space, she won't be the first off-site competitor. Since 2005, U.S. soldiers in Iraq … Read more

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

The art of the Rubik's Cube

You always knew there's an art to Rubik's Cubes, but it turns out there's more than you thought.

The street-art Space Invader folks, taking a break from surreptitious outdoor installations of vintage video-game mosaics, have branched out into using collections of Rubik's Cubes as an artistic medium.

They produced a number of simple Space Invaders mosaics, but more impressive are the larger photo mosaics--for example, the Clockwork Orange character made from a grid of 171 cubes. The phrase Stanley Rubikscubrik springs to mind.

Meanwhile, for traditionalists, there are new advances in the Rubik's Cube brain-teaser … 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