Webware

At Tuesday's Under the Radar conference in Mountain View, Calif., start-up junkie Patrick Koppula took to the stage to pitch his latest effort called Ffwd. I briefly mentioned it in a roundup of other companies, but it's worth digging a little deeper into what could become an incredibly addictive way to watch Web videos on your computer and at home on your big-screen television.

Ffwd is taking a page from recommendation/browsing service StumbleUpon by offering a way for people to click on a single button and instantly jump to new content. It's the kind of activity that encourages short-attention-span videos, or at least skipping videos without an immediate hook.

The UI is centered around an embedded video player and an oversized button that does the skipping. As I said Tuesday, this is where things get interesting. Ffwd lets users categorize any and every piece of content into three or more different channels. This categorization lets users skip to another set of similar content where that same video resides. Koppula told me this keeps people from reaching dead ends, and lets them discover new content without having to use any sort of search tool.

Users might not be ready to start hitting the forward button, but Ffwd is banking on people wanting to skip what they're watching to see what's next.

(Credit: Ffwd)

Another standout aspect of the service that it figures out what content you'll like based on what you've already listed as your interests. It will jack into your social-networking profile or content mentions on tracking services like FriendFeed and form a record of your tastes to make recommendations on channels or certain pieces of content.

The Wii interface lets you jump ahead to the next video with just a press of a button (click to enlarge).

(Credit: Ffwd)

The plans for a Nintendo Wii interface are also ambitious. While StumbleUpon has had its own Wii front end since early 2007, Ffwd will be more tied into the experience people are getting on their regular computers. Video favorites will transfer over, as will bookmarked channels. Like StumbleUpon, users navigate with just the directional pad, but won't have to type as much with what Koppula considers the Wii's weakpoint: its onscreen keyboard.

The communal chat rooms might be the strangest feature (and I'm not quite sure I get them). Koppula pitched it to me as an online version of Mystery Science Theater, the show that would feature comedians chatting over the dialogue tracks of feature-length films. Ffwd will feature something slightly similar with a select group of 12 users who can add videos and chat about them while everyone else watches it live. Lycos did something similar with its Cinema service that was quietly launched last month.

Ffwd is launching in private beta in the next few months with a content platform to follow. In the meantime there's a Facebook app that has nothing to do with the product but is a fun way to test how the app scans your tastes. We'll have a hands-on report and some reader invites when the service goes live later this summer.

Share2Me is essentially a button for forwarding any content to MySpace, AIM, and a number of e-mail services.

Aimed at 15-to-24 year olds, Share2Me is a logo that sits on your browser (just Firefox for now, Internet Explorer is next). Should you stumble upon a YouTube video or Flickr photo that just MUST be plastered onto your MySpace profile, click the Share2Me logo button and choose whether you want the content forwarded in a MySpace message, as a comment on another's page, or simply on your own MySpace profile. Content also can be sent to any Gmail, Yahoo Mail, MSN Hotmail, and AOL account.

(Credit: Boxbe)

I guess this must be a pretty empowering concept to some people. Take those nasty spammers who fill your inbox with "Ch3ap V1c0d1n!!!!" and "FREE Credit Rating Analysis!" and tell them that if they want to make their way into your Gmail, they're going to have to pay the toll. Kind of like that troll-under-the-bridge fairy tale--or was that a Monty Python sketch?

I digress. There are a few companies out there that are trying to convince you that opting into spam is not only good, it can get you some pocket change (InboxDollars comes to mind). But as far as we know, a new company called Boxbe--which we heard about in the San Jose Mercury News--is the first to give it the troll-under-the-bridge spin. Interested customers sign up for a Boxbe.com e-mail forwarding account. You can set it so that only certain e-mail addresses can contact you (i.e. your friends) and name a fee that a marketer will be required to fork over to you in order for one of its e-mails to get through. Then, ideally, you accumulate a small fortune. (Or not.)

The big catch is that Boxbe isn't actually a spam filter. It doesn't do anything for spam that may be coming into your regular e-mail account, just the mail that is going to your Boxbe forwarding address. So if you already have a spam problem, this doesn't look like it'll be an ample solution. The ideal Boxbe customer is, at least in my opinion, a novice Internet user who's just starting to use services that require e-mail registration. By plugging a Boxbe address into a social networking site or e-mail list, you can guarantee (according to the company) that you won't be getting spam from it other than the stuff that you're demanding cash for. But as for pre-existing spam, nada.

And there's another big downside. If your friends are sending e-mails to a Boxbe.com e-mail address, they'll sort of be able to catch onto the fact that you're trying to squeeze money out of poor, innocent spammers.