Crave

Adam Hirsch, COO of Mashable, joins the show today to talk about something that we thought would never happen: social networking for doing actual good in the world.

Adam before he descends into madness.

(Credit: Justin Yu/CNET)

Yeah, instead of flash mobs or sending NSFW pictures to your buddy, Adam has started the Summer of Social Good, which harnesses the power of social media to actually do some charity work in the world. You can donate a minimum of $10 to the organization, and it will split the donation evenly between The Humane Society, LIVESTRONG, Oxfam America, and WWF--not the World Wrestling Federation. We also chat a bit about the future of social networks, especially given the election of Barack Obama and the on-going Iranian election controversy. There is even a city in America that now asks for your Facebook log-in when you apply for a job in its government!

Also today, the iPhone 3G S launched this morning. It wasn't nearly as mad crazy as it was last year or for the original iPhone launch. Mostly, we think it's because there aren't that many new great features aside from faster speed, bigger capacity, and a faster processor. Also, we think that AT&T might have been a little too harsh with its upgrade policy. But if you really, really want the new iPhone 3G S and you have an older iPhone, check out YouRenew.com. For this week, it will buy your old cell phone and give you back some hard cash. Owners of the iPhone 3G 8GB can get $200!

Episode 33 of the Digital City, where we discuss Facebook's and Twitter's exploding traffic, Intel's billion-dollar fine, and some good and bad news for the video game industry. There are two versions of the show available now, the traditional audio stream, and our exciting, new video version -- check out both below.

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"Single Ladies (Put a Ring on It)" by the lovely Beyonce turns out to be Justin's ringtone. Find out how we found out on The 404 today. It's in the same vein of how we discovered about his obsession with Disney music and Alvin and the Chipmunks.

(Credit: Gizmodo)

On today's show we talk about video games, and no, Justin doesn't tune out. EA is pushing the iPhone/iPod touch platform pretty hard with releases of Madden NFL and the venerable Wolfenstein. We hopes it's the updated version and not the sprite-based classic Wolfenstein 3D, though killing Nazis on the subway train does sound like a lot of fun. Also in gaming news, a company called OnLive has announced a new "streaming video game service." Cool, except we don't want to wait two seconds for Chun-li to land a punch on Baraka.

(Credit: Gamespot)

Jeff flips out when the NHL announced it will stream hockey games live with multiple camera angles. Only catch is that it will cost you 20 BUCKS A DAY. In reference to our phone book story yesterday, "boxed water" is now in. Anyone ever hear about tap water? And FOX News has announced it will launch a new social network dedicated to "fair play and fair speech".

Win a chance to win a copy of Wheelman for the Xbox 360, starring Vin Diesel, if you enter our caption contest for this photo of our beloved Justin Yu. Feel free to make fun of his glasses, face, the Lexmark printer behind him, or that lumberjack flannel shirt. Funniest caption will get a copy of the video game and major props on the show.

Social-media company Moblyng is offering music fans a way to keep up to date with their favorite artists. That is, if their favorite artists are a part of the company's new Moblyze Me campaign.

Currently artists participating in the campaign include Metro Station, Lucy Schwartz, Black Tide, and Gym Class Heroes. Moblyng has added a "Moblyze Me" button to each of the artist's MySpace profiles. Once you click on the button for your favorite artist, content concerning that artist will be sent to your cell phone--provided you enter your number.

You'll be able to "moblyze" video, slide shows, links to an artist's ringtone store, tour dates, and news.

For certain artists, you'll be able to enter a customized WAP environment and access their IVR line. Yes, I had to look up both of those acronyms.

Moblyng plans to introduce more artists from "major and independent" record labels. While the bands currently on the list don't intrigue me, if implemented well this could be a useful service if you're really into a certain artist.

Our hardworking colleagues at CNET have been in the thick of the action at the CTIA wireless show this week and we figure Crave readers will want in on the fun, too.

(Credit: RIM)

In case you haven't seen, today Research in Motion, the maker of the BlackBerry, made a whole slew of announcements about bringing popular consumer applications to the device. It already has Facebook for BlackBerry, but now RIM is expanding.

• As CNET News reported earlier this week, Microsoft Live Search will be integrated with the BlackBerry Browser.

• BlackBerry users will now be able to schedule their TiVo recordings from their phone, and in the future, view those recordings from a BlackBerry. (Possibly stealing SlingPlayer for BlackBerry's thunder? Sling, by the way, said today SlingPlayer for BlackBerry is on track for release later this year.)

• RIM is also apparently not playing favorites: it will be offering a MySpace app for the BlackBerry as well.

• There will be a customized TicketMaster app for RIM phones, which means users can buy tickets right from their phones.

• And last, RIM is partnering with Internet radio site Slacker to allow BlackBerry users to make customized music channels. Phone owners can also store up to 1,000 songs on the device.

For full details on each application, see Maggie Reardon's article at CNET News.

Love by Cartier, an ad campaign that's not exactly for the emo-teen demographic.

When you think about "bling" on MySpace, you probably think about glitter text on profiles, or maybe Swarovski-studded Sidekicks, not Cartier jewelry. But that hasn't stopped the legendary luxury brand from launching a promotional campaign on News Corp.'s social network.

Starting Thursday, Cartier began featuring branded pages for its "Love by Cartier" product line for MySpace's English, French, Italian, Spanish, and Japanese sites. They'll be online for a year, and will feature new music from 12 artists, including Phoenix, Grand National, and Lou Reed.

Considering MySpace got its start as a hub for music lovers, the Love by Cartier campaign is appropriate in that respect. But considering MySpace is also best known as a youth site, the advertising of luxury brands seems out-of-place--you wouldn't think the audience would be there. Love by Cartier, after all, also has a campaign on the elite, invite-only social network Asmallworld, which has a jet-set user base that seems a much more appropriate target for a pricey jewelry brand.

But MySpace representatives say the site's image is a bit misleading, citing ComScore statistics that estimate a quarter of its traffic comes from households with annual incomes over $100,000. Scoring a brand partner like Cartier, they say, is indicative of its transformation from a social network to a global Web portal.

"Given MySpace's breadth, depth, and technology, we're able to function as a global social portal empowering brands to effectively reach audiences across our 29 localized communities," Travis Katz, managing director of MySpace's international division. "Cartier has been quick to embrace the opportunities presented by community, by offering all lovers of the brand exclusive and innovative content."

But don't think that MySpace has gotten an Eliza Doolittle-esque makeover. The newly redesigned home page on Thursday afternoon was branded with a campaign for the Pixar robot adventure movie Wall-E.

MySpace's enticing invitation page.

(Credit: Dong Ngo/CNET Networks)

Throughout the years, I've received countless invitations to join MySpace. Somehow, I never wanted to join. I have nothing against social network sites as I even have an account on Facebook. However, there's this bad feeling about MySpace when I look at the site. Call me a weirdo if you want, but what happened yesterday is my tangible explanation to all the rejections I've made.

At least since last Friday (possible earlier), MySpace put up a Web page to invite people to a "BlackCurtain" screening of the upcoming movie Wanted at AMC Metreon in downtown San Francisco, which is five blocks from CNET's HQ. My co-worker Eric entered his name and soon enough he got the movie invitation e-mail from MySpace. The invitation is good for two and as we're both big fan for comic-based movies, we were excited.

Myspace's ticket to...wait and be turned away.

(Credit: Erick Franklin/CNET Networks)

And we were not alone. We got to the theater at 5:30 or so (the show started at 7:30) and there were already about 60 people in front on of us. The line kept growing and at one point, we could see the total of about 300 hundred people. We felt pretty good as the ticket stated that it's a "first come first serve" event and we know the theater can hold hundreds of people. We were pretty sure that we would make it. The excitement was high.

Well, we could totally have made it if everyone was on equal footing. At about 6:40, they started to let people in. When there were 12 people in front of us, they stopped. At this point one of MySpace's representative started walking down the line asking for people from TechCrunch (or so he sounded), who then got pulled out of the line, showed their ID and whisked into the theater.

As it turned out, (and we had to go ask one of the representatives later to find out about this), this was a private screening for TechCrunch but MySpace, worrying that there wouldn't be enough attendees (or so the representative in shorts and a T-shirt told Eric), decided to "cordially invite you and a guest" to join.

The table left by MySpace's representatives as they all disappeared into the theater.

(Credit: Dong Ngo/CNET Networks)

In the end, Eric and I, together with more than 100 people, were left in line until the last minute without being told what was going on. By the time we realized we wouldn't make it in, we had already wasted 2 hours. At this point, a woman from Universal Studio started walking around asking us for our e-mail so that she would send us a "free" ticket for "Hellboy II." We didn't sign up as we were there to see Wanted, plus we didn't want another "first come first serve" experience. Meanwhile the MySpace people--the host--gave one another a ticket then disappeared into the theater, without saying anything to the crowd. Not even one apology.

In my life, I've never felt more disrespected and misled. And I felt that for the whole crowd. First of all, if the screening was a private for TechCrunch, then just make it private! If you want to invite some extra, make it clear on the ticket or at least announce that at the theater. In this day and age, MySpace could have easily estimated how many free tickets they should have sent out. Inviting hundreds of people to come and wait for hours then turning them away was just wrong and disrespectful. Secondly, it's not like we can't afford the ticket. The reason we signed up for the screening is because it was the only chance to see the movie before its opening date (I am sure you all can relate to this). The worst thing is watching the MySpace people talking to one another, stretching, smiling...like nothing was going on in front of hundreds of anxious Wanted fans. The MySpace experience left us such a bad taste in our mouths that it has at least for now, completely sullied our enthusiasm for the actual movie.

Working in the media my whole life, I've attended many promotional events; this was by far the most poorly organized and utterly distasteful event. The kind that makes me question the very intelligence the organizer.

If MySpace wants to be "a place for friends," it needs to learn what kind of place that should be, to recognize that everyone deserves to be informed and treated with respect. We both view the attitude of MySpace's representatives at the event indicative of the company's integrity and organization. So my friends, let's be friends some place else and please don't invite me to join ever again!

Update: Qbox seems to have fixed the problem, and songs from MySpace now play fine within the Qplayer. See my updated post here.

With the Web allowing any artist to present music to the masses, listeners are less likely to distinguish between the local band they saw down the street and major label acts they heard on the radio. Of course listeners know the difference, but they don't care--they want to be able to flip between all the music they're interested in without hunting each song down on a particular Web site. Unfortunately, local artists with limited resources tend to stick to social networking sites like MySpace, and finding music on these sites can be painful. Plus there's no guarantee the music you want will be on the particular site you're searching.

That's why I was excited to read about Qbox, a new service that entered public beta-testing today. It attempts to be an all-in-one catalog of all music stored on social networking sites. At launch, the service catalogs tunes from MySpace, Bebo, and YouTube.

The Qplayer embeds MySpace music pages, but when I tested it out, I couldn't get the songs to play.

(Credit: MySpace, The Curious Mystery)

I visited the site and ran a search for some fairly obscure Seattle-area artists I've played shows with before and really admire, like Wah Wah Exit Wound and The Curious Mystery. Sure enough, all the songs they've posted on MySpace appear immediately. It's not like MySpace, where I have to make sure I've selected "Music" rather than "People" from the dropdown menu, then wade through a bunch of sponsored links to visit the musician's site.

World-famous bands like Led Zeppelin and Pink Floyd also have songs on MySpace, and therefore appear in the search results. In theory, I could construct a playlist with all of these songs interspersed with one another. So far so good.

Until I hit the "play" button on the site and was informed I had to download a desktop application, Qplayer. Grumble grumble--if this stuff's all being streamed from the Web, why should there be a desktop app? Nonetheless, I downloaded, shut down my browser, installed the player, opened my browser again, signed in to the site again, conducted a search for Curious Mystery, and hit play. This time the player launched. As you might be able to tell from the screenshot on this page, it looks like little more than a modified Web browser: it basically displays the relevant MySpace page on the right, with a playlist on the left. The artist's graphic appears above the playlist, but below that appear two random images which link to other artists--presumably some sort of promotion.

Fine, but where's my music? Unlike the case when I load a MySpace page into my regular Web browser, it didn't start playing when the Qplayer loaded. So I hit the "play" arrow above my playlist. Nothing. I went back to the Web site and tried hitting the "play" icon next to the song I wanted, and it just relaunched the player. No music.

The audio-only user guide didn't help. The FAQ didn't help.

Alas, that's beta software. Take a deep breath. Uninstall. Come back next week and try again.

Flip Video Mino

(Credit: Flip Video)

Although it was recently outed by B&H, Wednesday marks the official unveiling of Pure Digital's Flip Video Mino, the latest camcorder from one of the leaders of the low-res, straight-to-Web capture pack. Thinner and smaller than its popular sibling, the Flip Video Ultra, the Mino crams similar technology into a more compact, more attractive package that can fit into a pants pocket.

Most of the Mino is about redesign. The USB connector now flips straight up, rather than to the side, for an overall more compact footprint that should fit better in a crowded USB environment. Though it has a slightly smaller LCD display--1.4 inches compared with 1.5 inches--the back navigation controls look a mite more sophisticated than before. Pure Digital has also punted the replaceable battery in favor of a nonremovable lithium ion model. The company claims you can shoot for four hours on a charge.

USB connector (left) and back (right)

(Credit: Pure Digital)

Like the 60-minute version of the Ultra, the Mino comes equipped with 2GB of memory, capable of storing 60 minutes of its VGA-resolution video. The company has moved up to a later generation image-processing architecture. So in theory the Mino should provide a bit better image quality, and the company says that the camcorder includes an updated--more sensitive--microphone with improved signal processing. And, of course, it comes with in-camera software that provides the plug-in-and-upload simplicity which endears these camcorders to sharers on sites like YouTube and MySpace; the latter is a new partner for the company. In addition, the Mino now supports direct operation on a Mac, without requiring software installation. It also provides a TV-out connector for larger-scale enjoyment.

The company stresses that the Mino is not intended to replace the Ultra--it's a "social accessory for the YouTube/MySpace/Facebook generation to communicate and express themselves." A PR rep quotes market research saying this magic demographic wants it "thinner to fit in their pocket and that they would prefer rechargeable batteries (like an iPod) and a sleeker/cooler design."

Maybe I'm too old to understand why everyone wouldn't want a smaller, sleeker, and more functional--albeit slightly more expensive--version of the same product, regardless of their need to accessorize their social life.

The Mino is slated to ship via selected online and brick-and-mortar retailers, including Amazon.com, Walmart.com, and directly from the company's TheFlip.com, and will go into wider distribution this fall. It costs $179.99.

Pure Digital also announced a make-your-own-DVD service; you upload up to an hour's worth of video, and they burn a DVD and distribute it to your family and friends. That will run you $19.99 a pop. The company also claims you can "keep your videos archived forever," but remember that "forever" doesn't mean the same thing to companies as it does to people. Can you say MSN Music?