Videophlow Makes YouTube a Group Experience

Imagine: you’ve found the next hit video on the web. Having just laughed yourself to tears, you regain your composure long enough to send a link of the video to your best friend, expecting to be praised for your extraordinary sense of humor. Then you wait. Five minutes go by, and still nothing. Did they like it? Did they even watch it? Finally, your efforts are rewarded with a hollow “LOL”.

It’s happened to all of us. The internet does a great job when it comes to sharing media, but it removes the human element from the viewing experience.

Oortle is trying to change that. In late 2007 they launched a webapp called Photophlow, currently in private beta, which at its core is a group chat centered around photographs (though it includes a number of other features as well). Users can browse through a Flickr photo album, and everyone will see the same thing at the same time, allowing for real-time reactions and discussion.

Now, they’re taking the next step with Videophlow, which takes the same dynamic community experience and applies it to YouTube. Groups of friends watch the same videos simultaneously as they interact with chat, emoticons, and gestures - viewers can even throw virtual tomatoes at the screen, complete with an animated splat.

All users will see the same portion of a video at the same time, even if they skip to a different scene. And best of all, groups can seamlessly transition to new videos. This has the chance to be a big hit - I can easily imagine groups of friends swapping (and watching) their favorite videos during late night viewing marathons.

Oortle is showing Videophlow to the public for the first time this afternoon at the Web 2.0 Launchpad, and will be opening in private beta in two weeks. We’ll let you know when that happens, and will have at least 100 invites to give out when the time comes.

We should note that a very similar application is available from SeeToo, which allows for simultaneous viewing of video content from a user’s computer rather than YouTube.

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Facebook Chat Now Works For Everyone

I’m not an avid Facebook user, but I have been checking it every now and then for the promised chat application, and as of today it seems to finally be available for everyone. And, although I have certain reservations about yet another web based chat application, I must say I love it.

The chat is integrated into Facebook well - all of its components are displayed in a minibar that’s always at the bottom of your screen. It’s practical, yet unobtrusive. My Facebook friends seem to have embraced it really well, since most of them have started chatting like crazy right away. The whole thing simply makes sense; you’re there to communicate with your friends anyway, so chat is the logical extension to Facebook’s functionality.

Options and features wise, Facebook chat doesn’t really offer all that much; the settings tab hides exactly four options: Show Mini-Feed Stories in Chat, Play Sound for New Messages, Keep Online Friends Open, and Show Only Names in Online Friends. The chat history is remembered even after you close the chat, and even after you log out and log back in. It would be nice if you could extract the entire log and save it somewhere as backup, though. I’d also like to see the standard, one click status updates: I’m busy, I’m AFK, etc. The Facebook folks are aware that features are scarce, and they promise more in the future.

All in all, Facebook chat is a great addition to the service. To paraphrase one of our commenters put, Facebook chat maybe won’t replace your other chat applications, but it’ll do just fine for chatting with people who you usually don’t chat with.

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Live Mesh - The Version You Can Understand

I’ve been reading the coverage of Microsoft Live Mesh, Microsoft’s latest project uncovered at the Web 2.0 conference in San Francisco, and I get the feeling that after all the buzzwords being thrown around, most people still won’t understand what the hell this thing is really about. So, I’ve decided to make it as simple as possible.

What - Live Mesh is a service that lets you synchronize your settings, files, feeds and applications on several computers.

What’s the big deal - there are already ways to synchronize stuff on the net. Foxmarks is a good example: you install it in Firefox on several computers, and your bookmarks sync seamlessly. Live Mesh, however, is a single platform that will make it easier for 3rd party app developers to do this. If Microsoft does this right, you’ll get used to using the Live Mesh for syncing all your devices, files as well as most or all of your applications.

Is this like a WebOS (Webdesktop, Webtop?) - yes, although everyone seems to be avoiding the term, this is a lot like all those WebOS apps you’ve seen. You get a virtual desktop with 5GB of storage and you can access it from anywhere. It’s integrated with Windows’ Remote Desktop, so it’s really simple to set up.

How will it look and feel in practice (we’re talking about the future here) - Let’s say that you and three other coworkers have a shared Mesh desktop. You fire it up, check out the log to see who changed what. Great, Mike added the graphics you needed. You add some notes to the graphics and drop them into the Mesh, but you share it only with your devices; they’re not ready to be seen by everyone just yet. On the way to work, you want to start some downloads on your computer at work, so you remotely connect to it through your iPhone. The rest of the trip you read your feeds; the ones you read at home are marked read so you can just keep reading where you left of.

To put it really simple: the promise of the Mesh is that you won’t have to care where you are or which device you’re using - your data will always be there. You’ll only have to care about which data you want to share with whom.

Which devices - Right now, we’re talking only about Windows XP and Vista computers; in the future, it will work with Mac, mobiles, etc.

Who built it - Microsoft’s CTO Ray Ozzie, and a team of about a hundred other engineers at Microsoft.

Here’s a couple of links for those who want to go in-depth. Mesh’s official home page and its accompanying blog might be of interest. A hands on preview of Mesh is here.

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Who Are The Biggest Users of Amazon Web Services? It’s Not Startups.

Amazon loves to talk about its Web Services because it positions the company as a bold innovator bringing cloud computing to the unwashed masses and other companies still stuck in the land of legacy data centers. But it is coy when it comes to details about the actual business behind Amazon Web Services, which includes its S3 storage service, EC2 compute cloud, and SimpleDB online database.

During its fourth-quarter earnings call, Amazon offered up the tidbit that Amazon Web Services (AWS) now uses up more bandwidth than Amazon.com proper, but not much else. You could infer, however, that the business is not yet very large, accounting for less than $131 million of Amazon’s $5.7 billion in revenues that quarter. The revenues may be small, but they are no doubt growing very quickly.

So who are using these services? A high-ranking Amazon executive told me there are 60,000 different customers across the various Amazon Web Services, and most of them are not the startups that are normally associated with on-demand computing. Rather the biggest customers in both number and amount of computing resources consumed are divisions of banks, pharmaceuticals companies and other large corporations who try AWS once for a temporary project, and then get hooked.

That surprised me. These are the types of customers you wouldn’t expect to see running their data through a hosted service. But apparently the cost advantage of paying by the drink versus buying new hardware and staffing up to do a random data run is convincing them to trust more of their data with Amazon. It goes without saying that these are the types of companies who demand the highest security for their data. Banks and drug companies. And they have a lot of data to crunch.

You just hear more about the startups because many are increasingly putting their entire businesses on Amazon, and the economics of cloud computing really levels the playing field for them. They also tend to be more open about their data practices. But cloud computing is already going much deeper than the startup world, and gaining adherents in big IT organizations.

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Photobucket Plays Catch Up To Flickr, Public API Released

Photobucket, acquired by Fox Interactive Media in May 2007 for $300 million, is releasing their API to the public today and will allow third party developers to build photo/video storage and visualization to their applications. Adobe, AOL, FotoFlexer, Intercasting, RockYou, Slide and Snapvine are being announced as launch partners. API documentation is available at developer.photobucket.com.

Previously the API was released only to signed business development partners, and had limited functionality. Functionality includes log in via OAuth, album creation and editing, content uploading, content sharing via email, search and metadata access (tags, titles, descriptions, etc.).

Photobucket is also promoting third party services on their API, at gallery.photobucket.com.

Flickr has had an API available since late 2005, with hundreds of third party applications built on the base service.

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Get Ready for Water-Powered Cell Phones

"Samsung Electro-Mechanics has developed a micro-fuel cell and hydrogen generator that runs on water, writes the Chosun Ilbo. Oh Yong-soo, vice president of Samsung Electro-Mechanics' research centre, who said that when the handset is turned on, metal and water in the phone react to produce hydrogen gas. The gas is then supplied to the fuel cell where it reacts with oxygen in the air to generate power. Other fuel cells need methanol to produce hydrogen, while Samsung's needs only water. Since the micro-fuel cell can generate up to three watts of electricity, it could be used in mobile devices. The new fuel cell could power a handset for ten hours, twice as long as rechargeable batteries. Oh Yong-soo said water-powered handsets are expected to hit the market by 2010."



I've always been a bit of a skeptic. This is one of those "I'll believe it when I see it" stories. Think it'll really happen? When you're in the mall you can get a drink from the drinking fountain and charge your phone at the same time? Maybe in the summer when your power's getting low, you can just take a dip in the pool and poof! - you're all charged up! I wonder if eventually it can be used for laptops too. I'll be sure and update this story in 2010 and see where we're at.

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Microsoft Acquires Farecast For $115M

Rumors about the acquisition of Farecast are accurate - in a very brief blog post CEO Hugh Crean says they’ve been acquired by Microsoft.

SeattlePI, which first broke the rumor last week, says the price tag was $115 million. While the two companies are an understandable fit given their proximity and partnership over MSN Travel, SeattlePI reports that Farecast entertained multiple offers before accepting Microsoft’s.

Farecast is an airfare pricing comparision tool that also uses a predictive algorithm to recommend when you buy your ticket. So the idea is to show the user not just who has the cheapest ticket, but whether or not waiting might make sense as well. The site has also guarantees tickets at its predicted prices for an extra charge. As of this past fall, it also began helping travelers determine the fairness of hotel pricing.

The deal follows the acquisition of competitor SideStep by Kayak in December.

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AT&T Mobile TV Launch Date and Price List Revealed

"In our post last month containing live shots of AT&T’s MediaFLO on the LG Vu and Samsung Access. We also told you that the service would launch in May, but further details were under lock and key at the time. Thanks to an anonymous source inside AT&T, we now have all the details you need about the live television service we’ve all been waiting for. First and foremost, the service will launch on May 4 and will be rebranded as AT&T Mobile TV... That’s right people, real deal broadcast TV on your mobile with no buffering time... In terms of what you can expect all this to do to your battery life, Mobile TV will be roughly equivalent to an active voice call."

This is fantastic news! Hopefully now we will finally be able to see the HTC Foreseer (pictured above) finally crawl its way out of the great big Windows Mobile heaven in the sky. The chances of us actually seeing the HTC Foreseer again are pretty slim to none since AT&T has opted to use Qualcomm's MediaFLO technology to broadcast real-time television to their handset line-up instead of the European DVB-H standard which the HTC Foreseer utilized. All is not lost though, with HTC's big announcement coming up on May 6th there is still a chance we could see a MediaFLO Windows Mobile Smartphone or Pocket PC in our future!

For those itching to subscribe to AT&T's new MediaFLO service, it is scheduled to launch on May 4th, 2008. The current subscription price list is as follows:

• Mobile TV Limited - $13/month: Includes four channels; Fox Mobile, CBS Mobile, NBC, and NBC News
• Mobile TV Basic - $15/month: Includes 9 channels; Fox Mobile, CBS mobile, NBC, NBC News, Comedy Central, MTV, Nickelodeon, CNN Mobile and ESPN
• Mobile TV Plus - $30/month: Includes the nine channels listed above as well as an exclusive Sony Pictures channel

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Offline access to Google Docs

Posted by Janani Ravi, Software Engineer

Our team has a real affinity for free-spirited types, and so we spend a lot of time thinking up ways to make Google Docs friendlier even to people on the go. If you're one of those, you already know how you can access your Google Docs from anywhere, how nice it is to avoid having to email yourself files or back up docs with a thumbdrive, and how easily you can collaborate with others.

Of course there was a teeny thing missing: you needed an Internet connection to make Google Docs work for you. Now, for documents, that's no longer true. As you'll read on the Google Docs blog, starting today and over the coming weeks we're rolling out offline editing access to word processing documents to Google Docs users. You no longer need an Internet connection when inspiration strikes. Whether you're working on an airplane or in a cafe, you can automatically access all your docs on your own computer.

To see how offline access works, watch this video:

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Apple Reveals iPhone SDK

Today at a town-hall meeting at Apple's Infinite Loop campus in Cupertino, Steve Jobs showed off the iPhone software developer's kit for the first time. There has been a lot of speculation about what the kit would include, and what it specifically wouldn't. Now Steve Jobs says it will have the same APIs and Tools that Apple itself uses to develop iPhone apps.

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