Movie and TV show streaming service Hulu on Monday added tagging to the mix, allowing users to add up to 30 tags to each piece of content for the sake of organization. These tags also work site-wide, which means that users can see all types of related content regardless of whether it's a TV show or feature-length film.
Users have two choices for tagging: one is creating an all-new tag, while the other is to vote up a tag someone else has made. Each time a user does this it adds to the number, giving certain tags more validity, although unlike size-based systems it's not as immediately clear which tags are more popular or common. Users can also delete tags, but only their own--meaning that if there is a bad tag placed by another user there's no way to report it.
Hulu's new tagging system is part public, part private and works on all content.
(Credit: CNET)Tags are made public and can be seen by other users immediately, although they do not yet appear to be an integrated part of Hulu's search engine. Instead, users can search for a specific tag within the tag section of each video. It's also worth noting that some content on Hulu has an expiration date, so you can spend all the time in the world tagging videos, but something you tagged a few months ago might not be able to be watched at a later date.
One thing Hulu could do with tags (but probably won't) is add timing to the mix. Recently-launched (although still in private beta) AnyClip organizes movie clips by what's happening in them. Hulu could do the same thing with its content by giving users a way to tag by time the way video host Viddler does. Though again, this wouldn't be nearly as useful as AnyClip due to Hulu's frequent content expirations.
Worth noting is that competitor YouTube has long had tags for its hosted movies and TV shows. However, it does not let users add them.
Adobe Systems on Saturday will be unveiling a slightly sleeker version of its Acrobat.com hosted-application service.
The site, which combines a number of tools, including word processing, PDF conversion, spreadsheets, and live Web meetings, has been reworked with a new architecture the company says will help it scale beyond its 6 million existing users. Currently, it is garnering about 100,000 sign-ups a week, with about half those coming from the United States.
Saturday's release includes 35 new features, all of which have been suggested by Adobe's customers through its Reddit-like Ideas page, which lets anyone vote up or down user-generated suggestions. The most notable addition is a new organizer, which consolidates all of the user's files and projects saved on Adobe's servers.
In a phone call with CNET earlier this month, Acrobat.com Director of Project Management Rick Treitman, said the organizer was the No. 1 most requested user feature. "It used to be confusing. We had three organizers, or places where users could organize files. Now there's one," he said.
The new file organizer adds some subtle changes, the most apparent being a white background, which goes against the company's infatuation with using black or dark-gray backgrounds in its products, but which makes it easier to differentiate the text and file types. Treitman said users overwhelmingly complained about it being too dark and hard to read.
Users also wanted a way to search through their files, Treitman said, so the company has added file-searching capability, albeit at a limited capacity. You can, for example, search by file name, but not within the contents of each individual file, something Treitman says is planned for a future release.
The new file organizer, a sea of white, features a new search tool that lets users wade through their files.
(Credit: Adobe Systems/CNET)Other organizational niceties include a way to create lists, which Treitman compared to the playlist feature in Apple's iTunes software, since you can add files to multiple lists without changing their organization in your main file explorer. Files can either be dragged and dropped into these lists, or added through a right-click contextual menu.
Along with improvements to Acrobat.com, Adobe is also launching its first mobile application for the site, designed for iPhones and BlackBerry handsets. The app itself was actually built by ScanR, and it looks about the same as the company's existing mobile tool. It lets users view and convert any file they have stored on Adobe's servers, as well as convert it into a PDF or send it as a fax. Users can also snap a photo with their camera and have it sent straight to their Adobe storage.
Treitman told us the next big plan for Acrobat.com is to add a work spaces feature that offers an area in which multiple users can collaborate on documents at once and keep track of any changes made. This should bode well for the company's business users, who may have been wooed by tools from Google or Box.net, the latter of which is doing more and more to keep its users within the confines of its file storage service with features like a built-in document editor and a news feed that tracks collaborators' changes.
The new features will not change the price of Adobe's Acrobat.com paid services, which run anywhere from $15 a month to $390 a year, depending on which of the two plans users choose.
Former U.S. Vice President Al Gore discusses his hopes and fears for the future of the smart grid.
(Credit: Josh Lowensohn/CNET)SAN MATEO, Calif.--Former U.S. Vice President Al Gore hopes that America's next-generation power grid will be a lot like the Internet. Or at least that's the plan.
How close we get to that goal depends on what happens in the next five years, Gore said in a speech here on Thursday evening at blog VentureBeat's GreenBeat conference, where he outlined many of the challenges the United States faces in upgrading its power grid. Along the way, he made comparisons to how the advent of the so-called smart grid will enable the kind of solutions and business innovation that the Internet brought during the 1990s.
"The analogy to the Internet is quite an exact one. Not completely exact, but it's very relevant for lots of reasons. We are moving inexorably toward a widely distributed energy generation and storage model. We are still locked into the old centralized energy generation model," Gore said. "The rapid development of new generations of new smart storage systems are going to make a tremendous difference in connection with the smart grids." Those systems are designed to enable easier storage of unused electricity for peak times, when supplying it to large groups of customers can be difficult and more expensive.
Gore also foresees an entirely new set of devices and instruments to help utilities and consumers control and monitor usage--technology and business models that may not yet have been imagined. "(It's) much the same way the Internet made it possible to see this generation of Internet-ready devices that did not even exist before the Internet began to build out," Gore said.
... Read more
Popular online shopping site Woot is set to expand its network of sites into new territory: deal hunting.
Unlike some of the site's other properties, which offer a new item for purchase either on a daily or weekly basis (be it gadgets, wine, T-shirts, or kids toys), the new Deals.Woot service gets a steady stream of things to buy throughout the day. It's also run almost entirely by Woot's community. There are sponsored deals that have been hand-picked by Woot's editors, but users do the rest.
Users can add deals they find elsewhere on the Web through a simple submission form that pulls in photos and sometimes pricing information from the source page. Others can then vote these up or down (like links on Reddit), with the most popular (be it in total votes, or in vote velocity) rising to the top.
Woot's new Deals site lets users vote up or down user-generated deals.
(Credit: CNET)To keep marketers from gaming these rankings, the site has a members-only status for the time being; users can't vote deals up or down unless they've purchased something from Woot before. The site is also limiting who can access the deals site while it remains in private beta, beginning by first inviting longtime-registered users, then working backwards toward those who have recently joined.
Along with deal submissions and the forum threads that go with them, the site is also a question-and-answer service. It's not as structured as the rest of the site, and acts simply as an open forum about deals, deal retailers, or off-topic items. It, too, has the same up or down voting system, both for individual threads and replies. Together with this and the community-sourced deals, the site tracks some of the top deal submitters and forum commenters. There, users can see which deal has been the fastest to rise to the top of the charts, as well as how long it took to get there.
Woot's Deals leaderboard gives a behind-the-scenes look at what's happening on the deal-finding site.
(Credit: CNET)Woot's upcoming deal site remains an invite-only private beta, but the company hopes to launch it officially before Black Friday (which is next week). As previously mentioned, Woot members will be getting early access invites by e-mail depending on when they first registered for one of the company's services.
See also: Fatwallet, Slickdeals, RetailMeNot, Ebates, Dealnews.
Video host Vimeo on Wednesday is launching support for users on iPhone/iPod Touch and Google Android devices. The company has re-encoded the entirety of its staff picks and HD video showcase, both of which are the most heavily trafficked areas of the site from Vimeo's members, and referrers like Twitter.
"We've been working on it for the last few weeks," Blake Whitman, Vimeo's director of community told CNET News. "This is sort of the prelude of offering Plus members iPhone support; and in the future, an app," he said. In the meantime, the only member videos that get chosen to get the mobile encoding treatment are those that get picked by the site's editors. "In the future, like the next several weeks--maybe longer, we'll be offering Plus users the option to transcode their videos to an iPhone version too." Whitman says those special encodes could end up as a download option alongside the links to the source file, letting users save a copy that could be played back offline.
Even with the change, Vimeo continues to face stiff competition from Google-owned YouTube, which automatically encodes an iPhone-friendly version of any video that's uploaded. The popular video-sharing service has also re-encoded most of its back catalog to make its videos playable on it, and other mobile devices that don't run Adobe's Flash player. That said, YouTube had a leg up on many of its competitors (Vimeo included) by being built into the phone's OS.
The new feature, and mobile-friendly version of the site should be live right now. Whitman says that those on iPhones/iPods and Android devices will see a special mobile version of any video page for those that have been re-encoded, however some videos that work on iPhones and iPods may not work on Android right out of the gate.
Some Vimeo videos can now be watched on iPhones, iPods, and Android devices.
(Credit: CNET / Vimeo)
(Credit:
Mozilla)
It's been just under four months since Mozilla launched its pilot program for contributions, a way for users to donate to add-on developers for their time and effort.
The program was launched in tandem with a redesign of Mozilla's add-ons site that gave developers their own profile pages. Many add-on makers were already running donation programs through their own sites, but wanted the option to show up in Mozilla's catalog too.
Already it appears to be working, but on a smaller scale than some developers might have hoped. For the half dozen developers that CNET News talked to, none has made enough from it to, say, quit their day job. While Mozilla would not reveal specifics on which developers are getting the most contributions, it did provide us with the total amount given: around $20,000. An organization spokesperson said that most of that came in September and October.
Of the 500 or so developers who are participating in the program, the average contribution falls somewhere between $5 and $6, with the largest thus far being $150. All have gone through PayPal, which is the sole way to pay through Mozilla's add-on site. PayPal then gets a small fee out of each transaction, something that comes out of the developer's pocket, although this varies based on how much the user gives.
Other ways to make money
Some developers believe Mozilla has gone about the payment problem in reverse. With the current contributions program developers are given the chance to ask for money before the user even downloads the free add-on. So why not give them a way to ask for a contribution after a user has downloaded and installed it?... Read more
Adobe Systems on Friday introduced a new Photoshop app for Android users that lets them edit photos from their phone, as well as access their online photo collection on Photoshop.com.
The app comes just shy of a month after the release of the company's application for Apple iPhone and iPod Touch users, which quickly became the top free application in the App Store and grabbed a million downloads within a week of its release.
The version for Android shares the same, simple editing UI as the iPhone/iPod version, both of which let users make edits by sliding their fingers across the screen and undo any changes made. It also features some very basic photo editing tools like crop, rotate, and image flip, as well as controls for adjusting exposure and tweaking color tint and saturation. Android users even get one new tool that iPhone/iPod users don't even have yet, which lets them straighten a shot against a grid.
Photoshop for Android looks similar to its iPhone/iPod sibling, but has a few less editing effects.
(Credit: Adobe Systems)Here's the bad news though: Android users are getting a slightly-less featured version than those who use it on iPhones or iPods. The Android version is missing a whole menu full of filter effects, which can be one of the most enjoyable aspects of using the app. It's also missing the sketch tool, which can add a neat cartoonish effect to photos.
Snap this to jump straight to the app.
There is one feature that could make up for these omissions though, and that is the inclusion of an auto-uploader that can automatically send any photo you take on your Android device to Photoshop.com's cloud storage. Users just need to turn the option in within the app, and it will do it whether they have the app running or not. The only downside to this, is that just like on the iPhone/iPod version, you can only enter the Photoshop app's editing mode on photos that are stored locally.
Photoshop for Android can be found right now on the Android Marketplace. We've also included the app's barcode so you can hop right to it without having to type anything.
Social news site Digg is experimenting with a new way to give upcoming stories a chance at the limelight with an experiment the company is calling Digg Trends.
Stories that begin to experience a heightened amount of user interest in the form of off-site sharing, user discussion, and of course Diggs, will be presented up at the very top of Digg's home page, as well as being spouted in a special RSS and Twitter news feed. Once at the top of the page, those stories have 10 minutes to get voted onto the front page as a normally dugg story, otherwise they're buried into Digg's dead pool. All the while a giant counter ticks down how much time the story has left.
Along with the countdown timer, Digg is also putting forward some of its outgoing traffic numbers. Users can see how many clicks a trending story has gotten from the front page. Normally, the only other traffic numbers you see on a Digg story is when you're on the source site itself, though users must have the DiggBar enabled.
Trending stories get just 10 minutes to prove their worth like any other front-page story. The company is also making available how many users have clicked to view the source content.
(Credit: Digg)This new system is a stark difference from the somewhat nebulous promotion algorithm that exists for regular stories. Under the current system, stories have to earn their way onto the front page which involves standing out among an ever-growing pool of other upcoming stories. The company made this process a little more custom-tailored with the introduction of its recommendation engine, but it still requires that users actively visit that part of the site to see what's new. The new trending idea puts some of those stories up for everyone--and right on the front page.
In a company blog post about the new process, Digg's senior software engineer Kurt Wilms called it an "experiment," and said that it could change based on user feedback. Some Digg users have already voiced their opinions in the posting's comment section, citing that "bury brigades" (groups of highly opinionated users) could keep some stories from ever making it past their 10-minute window. The end result being that a story that could have legitimately made the front page on its own gets shut down before ever having a chance under the normal algorithm.
As with other new features, Digg seems to be rolling out Trends slowly, and to a small group of users. I'd expect it to show up for everyone in the next day or two.
It seems like everyone has an application directory these days, and now Flickr is no exception. While not offering up paid third-party services (yet), Flickr on Tuesday unveiled a reworked services section dubbed the "App Garden" that better showcases photo tools, and the people who have created them.
The new apps directory page manages to squeeze just about as many applications into a smaller space than the old one did. It also gives each app its own page where users can add descriptive tags and leave feedback in the form of comments. In fact, these new pages act just like Flickr photo pages, including giving registered users a way to favorite certain apps, which goes towards promoting up-and-coming apps higher up in the showcase. They also double as a shortcut to viewing other apps made by that same developer.
Flickr's new "App Garden" as the company calls it, is much more compact than the services directory that came before it. It also adds user interaction to the mix with comments and favoriting.
(Credit: CNET)One area where the new app system has not permeated just yet is in letting users see what apps their friends and contacts are using. For instance, Flickr's activity feed--which gives Flickr users a bird's eye view of what their friends are up to, does not show when a user has favorited one of these tools. Users will only be able to see what apps they themselves have favorited from within the App Garden, and not alongside their photo favorites. There is also no way to create collections of apps you like to share with others, as you can do with the recently-released gallery feature.
These things may come in time, but for now it's already a much better system than the previous API services page. Developers have more of a chance to try to convince users to give their app a spin before they ever leave the site, and other Flickr users are now able to chime in and recommend it, either through the new favoriting system, or in the comments. Whether Flickr decides to make some of this user activity a little more public is unclear.
After the jump: The before and after of the API services menu, and what's now the App Garden.
... Read more
If you're a regular user of the revision comparison feature in Google Docs, you'll likely enjoy new service Compare My Docs. It comes from the same folks who created TextFlow, the Adobe AIR-based app that spot differences across multiple copies of a Word document or rich text file.
Compare My Docs does many of the same things as TextFlow, including being able to compare up to six versions of the same document to see what's been changed. The big difference though, is that it runs right in your browser and requires no sign-up whatsoever.
Just like TextFlow, Compare My Docs color codes any changes it finds between the different revisions of a document and gives you a quick and easy way to accept, reject, or set aside a change. This means you can cruise through a document and keep the changes or revisions you like, while keeping an active log of what you don't.
When finished, you'll have a new version that has all of those changes, which can be saved either as a Word doc or rich text file back on your hard drive. Although unlike what you can do in TextFlow, with Compare My Docs there's no way to publish the finished product to the Web or save it in parent company Nordic River's servers for safe keeping; something that seems meant to entice users to try out TextFlow instead.
Compare My Docs looks a lot like TextFlow, in fact it basically is, but runs in your browser instead of as an Adobe AIR app.
(Credit: CNET)The service does manage to suffer from some of the limitations in the core technology behind both it and TextFlow, including having photos and charts being stripped out. This means you'll have to add them back in after you've run a few documents through its editor.
Along with Compare My Docs, Nordic River is also finally releasing an API for TextFlow, which will let developers make use of the service's comparison technology in their apps or Web services. This could help make up for some of the service's shortcomings, while augmenting the versioning tools currently offered by some online services. File hosting in particular comes to mind, since places like DropBox and Box.net offer versioning, and version rollback, but in order to see the differences you have to save, then open up each file and look for differences. Those places could now very quickly build tools that let users compare multiple versions of a saved Word or text file from right within the app.
Nordic River says that TextFlow in its Adobe AIR form will remain, but that the site is closing up to new users in a few weeks until it readies a new interface. In the meantime the company will continue its free and paid services to those who have already signed up.
Correction 8:57 a.m. on November 3: This story initially misstated that users could not make edits to the text within the tool. This was due to the functionality not being present in the pre-release version of the site used for review.
