AOL Adds Stupidest Idea Ever To AIM

In the latest Beta of AIM, you can make a direct connection with another user and see what the other is typing in real-time. Considering the messed up state some people type, whether it be drunk or angry, this is just not a good idea. Thankfully it does require both parties to agree to the connection, and that’s something we don’t see happening very often. You have to wonder why anyone would even think there was a benefit to seeing the other party type in real-time, and not only think there was a benefit, but take the time to development!

For whatever reason you might want it, go download the beta.

Streaming Music from Torrent Files

Online BitTorrent client BitLet has released a new service that lets users stream MP3 and Ogg encoded music directly from torrent files. The new music feature, called westeam, works by prioritizing bits at the beginning of each track -- and then subsequent to the one you just listened to, but also gives preference to rare bits to achieve optimal speeds. WeStream is a Java applet that works in any browser that support Java.

Westream's interface is simple, with controls for volume and playback. Like any BitTorrent client, it also seeds the file for as long as you keep the browser window open (click on the download speed link to see the speed at which you're uploading). "It would have been easy to design the streaming client to be extremely selfish, and make it care only for its needs," wrote westream's creators in a blog post. "Ideally, we tried to avoid it: westream should behave as most torrent clients, with a slightly different piece choosing strategy."

Westream is a useful BitTorrent innovation that lets users essentially "try before they buy." Presumably, the same idea can be applied to video -- imagine: streaming video distribution over BitTorrent. Very cool.

Google Enabled Televisions Coming Soon

Japanese manufacturer Matsushita (Panasonic) has signed a deal with Google that will see the company launch flat panel television sets that allow users to access YouTube and other Google services such as Picasa Web Albums.

The deal is said to be non-exclusive with the first units set to be launched in the United States in Spring.

The deal isn’t the first internet enabled television to be manufactured, but it is the first time Google has signed a deal in this space. Internet in the lounge room has long been a hyped technology that despite various platforms (including Windows MCE) has failed to capture the publics imagination, particularly given the need for a computer or internet specific device to connect. TV with internet access built in, if it’s delivered without any major premium over existing television sets has the potential of finally delivering mass market convergence. Having YouTube access built into sets as a default would also be a positive for Google as it continues to work towards strengthen YouTube’s long term dominance in light of increased competition.

Yahoo Releases Browser Based MP3 Player

This is clearly just a first step in whatever Yahoo’s grand plans are around the future of their music service, but today they released some code to embed a very simple Javascript based MP3 player on any website.

The player finds MP3s on a given web page, creates a playlist and a very simple overlay to play the songs. A small play icon is placed next to every MP3 link, and the player itself hovers over the bottom left of the page. It can be expanded to show a playlist of all files on the page (Yahoo is using the XSPF format).

To see it in action, check out this blog.

Social.im: The Instant Messaging Service For Facebook Junkies

If you don’t mind installing one more instant messaging client on your computer, and you happen to be a heavy Facebook user, check out social.im. This isn’t yet another instant messaging application that resides on Facebook; rather, it’s a normal IM client that grabs all of your Facebook friends via the Facebook API and brings them into Social.im.

The client also shows other basic information about facebook - new wall posts, messages, pokes, friend requests and photos tagged with your name.

It’s only available for Windows machines now, with a Mac version promised soon.

Typeroom Simplifies Web Page Editing Online

Los Gatos, CA based Typeroom is developing a web based content management system that enables on the fly editing of existing sites.

The idea is simple. Typeroom users specify the URL of the page they wish to edit. Typeroom then creates a copy of that page on their servers for editing. The editing itself is WYSIWIG based and covers areas such a text editing and image placement. Once a user is finished making their edits they can download the edited page directly to their computer, or (presuming its there site) update it via ftp directly from Typeroom itself.

There are a number of companies operating in this space, but most are focused on creating websites from scratch, and sometimes don’t support existing websites, at least not from typing in the URL of the page and allow users to edit the page then and there.

Typeroom provides a web based alternative to desktop design packages that even those not design literate could use.

Google Processing 20,000 Terabytes A Day, And Growing

A recent white paper by some Google engineers puts some numbers around the massive amount of computation that Google does every day to index the Web, process search results, and serve up ads, among other things. As oflast September, Google was processing 20,000 terabytes of data (20 petabytes) a day. This large-scale computing capability is a big part of Google’s competitive advantage over Yahoo, Microsoft, and everyone else.

Xobni: The Super Plugin For Outlook

Anyone who depends on email to work, knows how surprisingly bad Outlook is when you get beyond about ten contacts; conversations easily become jumbled, and keeping contacts up to date can be a pain. Xobni’s Outlook plug-in solves these problems with a sidebar that automatically tracks contacts and organizes emails into fully searchable threaded conversations linked back to those people.

Xobni’s sidebar has improved Outlook for me by offering faster search, and automatic organization of my email and contacts. Their search function alone has saved me time by just being faster and more comprehensive than Outlook’s native search. Emails can be searched as independent threads or viewed in the context of a contact’s profile (pictured right). The profile shows basic contact info (automatically updated) and a full history of threaded conversations, files, and people they’re connected to (the email “social graph”).

Anti YourTube Coalition

In another move to strengthen the anti-YouTube coalition, Viacom is syndicating its videos (from Comedy Central, MTV Networks, Nickelodeon, and Atom Films, among other properties) to a whole new slew of video-sharing Websites. The new recipients of Viacom’s video love are Dailymotion, Veoh (which already has Hulu and CBS videos), imeem, GoFish, and MeeVee. They join AOL, Bebo, Joost, MSN, and Comcast’s Fancast in gaining access to Viacom’s video library.

Viacom obviously wants to strengthen the hand of other video Websites against Youtube by spreading its videos everywhere except on YouTube. Viacom has a $1 billion lawsuit against YouTube for copyright infringement and yanked its videos from the site last year. As Comedy Central’s own Jon Stewart said last night regarding his parent company’s lawsuit against YouTube, “A billion dollars? What are they four-year olds?”

LinkedIn Joins The DataPortability Work Group

Joining the cavalcade of companies jumping on the open data bandwagon, LinkedIn has now joined Facebook, Google, Plaxo (announcement here) in joining the DataPortability Work Group.

LinkedIn has worked hard to become open since announcing their own open platform in June 2007 in response to Facebook, then becoming an initial OpenSocial launch partner in October 2007.