Webware

Yesterday, as the Republican presidential debate took place via YouTube, the Democratic National Committee quietly launched a rather notable Web 2.0 initiative itself. FlipperTV is a new service from the Democratic Party site that offers a growing library of video clips of the Republican candidates on the campaign trail. Users are encouraged to take the video and "use the footage as they wish." Wink wink.

(Credit: CNET Networks/Democratic National Committee)

In an era when home-brewed YouTube videos are more entertaining than 90 percent of network television, the DNC's strategy seems obvious. Why pay high-priced advertising companies to create mudslinging attack ads (that could blow up in its face) when you have millions of supporters with the technology to make their own videos and take responsibility for the content. The site even suggests that we "hold these candidates accountable for their comments and actions." ... Read more

HeySpread is a new service from the folks at Particles (creators of HeyWatch and HeyCast) that lets users upload a single video to multiple video-hosting providers. Just pick the video you want to upload from your hard drive, and HeySpread will pull up a listing of various video hosts. All you need is log-in information for each of them, and the file will automatically get sent out to each, assuming you've got the correct credentials.

HeySpread works with YouTube, Google, and MySpace Video, along with DailyMotion, Blip.TV, and four others. In my testing with five of the nine available video services, only one upload appeared to have failed (Yahoo Video), and the rest went up without a hitch.

This is a very helpful service for people who would like to upload things in one place, or those with slow Internet connections. Since you're basically just uploading it to HeySpread to take care of, you can avoid having to double, triple, or quadruple up on upload time to multiple services. The one missing piece is an editor for some of the more advanced options--like privacy settings, video descriptions, and additional links--on these video-hosting services. Of course, in most cases you can go in later on and add them by hand.

Just enter in your video hosting log-ins in nine of the supported sites, and your video will automatically be uploaded to each.

(Credit: CNET Networks)

Searchles, the social network that launched last June, has rolled out a new feature called Searchles TV, which lets you combine multiple clips from multiple services to share elsewhere in an embeddable player. Similar to SplashCast (see previous coverage), you can jog back and forth between clips without leaving the player. Searchles works with videos from YouTube, MySpace, Google Video, Grouper and Blip.tv, and plans to add more partners in the future.

What's neat about Searchles TV is that embedded players will reflect any changes you make to the master feed. SplashCast does this too, and it works really well if you want to showcase different content without having to change the embed code on a blog or Web site. This can be especially helpful in a site like MySpace, where making changes to the code can get a little tedious.

Here's a Searchles TV spot I created in about two minutes.