hosting

If you ever find yourself needing to throw a basic site up on the Web quickly, it would be worth a few minutes of your time to check out Weebly, the 2.0 version of which launched today. It is a free Web design and hosting system that takes nearly all the pain out of creating a site.

Weebly has big gaps in its feature set, but as a quick-and-dirty site host, it's not bad. I really like its simplicity. You can start by selecting a page layout from Weebly's templates (all of which look good), or just … Read more

Jubii is a new service that attempts to provide an all-in-one solution for Web communication and sharing. It combines e-mail, contact management, instant messaging, VoIP, and file hosting into one app. The big question is, whether combining these things together provides a cohesive solution that's better than individual Web services. In short, the answer is no.

Jubii centers around its e-mail platform, which uses a simple tabbed interface with two separate in-boxes. E-mails from people on your approved contact list automatically get sent to your private box, whereas others make their way straight to the public. Creating new e-mails … Read more

It's a common problem: your point-and-shoot camera's microphone picked up nothing but wind while you were at the park shooting a video of people flying kites. The solution? Wipe over the track with music. But putting licensed music over the videos not only requires video editing software, but also the digital rights to publish. YouTube has rolled out a new service called AudioSwap which hopes to quell both of those problems.

To use AudioSwap, just pick a video you've uploaded and browse the provided audio list. You'll get a preview right away, and with the click … Read more

Microsoft unleashed its Soapbox Web video platform to the unwashed masses yesterday, taking the service out of private beta. We covered Microsoft Soapbox in September. The service has a clean and simple layout, and manages to keep both the MSN moniker and the often-clunky Windows Live Login (formerly .NET Passport). What baffles me about this is that despite having access to all your personal information, Soapbox won't parse your Windows Live ID to fill in simple profile information like your name and location, unless you've recently gone through and updated it since opening a Hotmail account in the … Read more

XMG Image launched its public beta yesterday. The photo hosting and editing service gives you 200MB of free storage, with a bigger pro plan on the way. XMG Image offers the standard fare of individual and batch photo uploading, but adds extensive album and tag creation and management. There's also customized sharing for forums, Web sites, and blogs.

What differentiates XMG Image from other photo hosting sites is its use of new Web technologies like Ajax. Ajax pop-up dialogs are quickly overtaking regular old pop-up messages on sites, and XMG is no exception as nearly all the command options … Read more

Lycos Mix is a new video-playlist creation tool that lets you string together video clips from various hosting services. The videos sit beside a live chat window based off of Lycos' Cinema technology. Casual observers can come in, watch videos, and chat with you. It's almost like a bar except a little creepier.

When you're done adding content, which is done by pasting URLs or using the Lycos Mix bookmarklet from the content's source page, you can watch, rearrange, or chat about the videos, all within the same screen. The adding process is a little arduous, as … Read more

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

Embeddable video is getting pretty cool. Static preview images seem to be a thing of the past. Blinkx, which is showcasing its service today at Demo 2007, is announcing a new widget called 'Blinkx It' that crawls your blog or Web site to deliver contextual video content. Think of it as Google Ad Sense with videos and no advertising. For example, clicking the 'Blinkx It' widget below will bring up videos related to News.com stories:

This is nice and unobtrusive, but the results aren't necessarily pertinent. In most cases, I was unable to get a smattering of relevant … Read more

Flickr member Hamad Darwish is now a part of computing history, with two of his photographs included in Windows Vista. Usually Microsoft doesn't approach people with (we're assuming) large checks unless they're vying for a name or settling a lawsuit, but Darwish's work wowed Microsoft so much they hired him for a photo shoot.

Apparently there are three more images from Flickr users shipping with Vista, along with a few from Microsoft employees, too.

This is a cool use of services like Flickr. While Corbis, iStockPhoto, and Getty Images are all a hotbed for finding good … Read more