Hasta La Gadget!

This article was written on February 05, 2008 by CyberNet.

It’s Super Tuesday in the United States today which means that a good chunk of states are holding their primaries or caucuses. A whopping 52 percent of Democratic delegates and 41 percent of Republican delegates are up for grabs with 24 states heading to the polls. We’ve already talked about how different this election year is in terms of how people get their information about the different candidates (via the Internet), but it’s also different because more people are wanting to share information and opinions via the web as well.  There are a handful of sites that will help you keep up with with and share all of the action today.

YouTube

You’ll want to visit http://www.youtube.com/supertuesday today to view and share “political opinions, analysis, interviews, or campaign trail footage.” They’ve got a big map that is clickable so that you can zoom into your state see videos that were taken in your area. They encourage people to document their whole primary experience from the start to the end, and then share it so that people who aren’t familiar with what the primaries are like will know.

Washington Post

The Washington Post is getting in on Super Tuesday action as well.  For the first time ever, www.washingtonpost.com and Newsweek will be hosting a webcast with live reporting, results and discussion all online. It all starts at 6PM (Eastern), and you can get access to that coverage by clicking here.

BBC

Even BBC has an interactive map that users can click on to learn more about what is going on in each state.  For example, I clicked on Illinois and found that there are 153 democratic delegates and 57 republican delegates available today, Feb. 5th. They note that Obama is expected to win the state on the Democratic side while McCain is expected to win the Republican side.

Know of a site that will be covering Super Tuesday? Let us know!

Copyright © 2014 CyberNetNews.com

This article was written on May 11, 2007 by CyberNet.

MySpace has taken a big step today on trying to filter out copyrighted content in the form of both audio and video. The campaign they launched is called Take Down Stay Down and aims to prevent the reposting of copyrighted content once it has already been removed.

Here’s what the press release by MySpace had to say:

“We have created this new feature to solve a problem that has long frustrated copyright holders and presented technical challenges to service providers – how to prevent copyrighted content from being re-posted by the same or a different user after it has been taken down by the copyright owner,” said Michael Angus, EVP and General Counsel for Fox Interactive Media. “MySpace is pleased to be the first website to implement a more effective solution to this challenging problem. This is a ground-breaking and unprecedented benefit for copyright owners that re-enforces MySpace’s position as the leader in copyright protection on the internet.”

…

When a content owner informs MySpace that a user has improperly posted its content onto MySpace Videos, not only is the video promptly removed by MySpace, but MySpace also creates a digital fingerprint of the video content and adds it to its copyright filter, which is based on industry-leading Audible Magic technology. If any user tries to upload the same content that has been removed, the filter will recognize the digital fingerprint and block the content from being uploaded. This way, when copyright owners remove content from MySpace, they will have greater comfort that it will stay down and not be reposted. MySpace is the first to offer this feature to copyright owners.

As reported in the press release, MySpace is relying on the technology from Audible Magic to do all of the filtering. If this campaign is successful I’m sure Audible Magic will become worth a lot of money in no time, and it wouldn’t surprise me to see some big company acquire it. This is something that both Google Video and YouTube badly needs, so Google is a prime candidate to be the one to acquire them.

I’m sure people will find ways around the new filtering system on MySpace, but it will probably be enough to prevent the more casual users from trying to upload copyrighted content. What do you think? Is it going to be a flop or is MySpace on to something?

Copyright © 2014 CyberNetNews.com

This article was written on January 14, 2008 by CyberNet.

Over the weekend we decided to do something to keep us busy, and what we came up with was an iGoogle Gadget and iPhone Web App for checking your local gas prices (U.S. only). A full introduction to iGas is available, but here’s a quick overview for those that want to dive right in:

• A standalone website is available which has been optimized for the iPhone, but really works in any browser. Just point your browser to http://cybernetnews.com/igas to get started.
• iGoogle users can click here to add the gadget to their personalized homepage.

We have setup a dedicated page for iGas that outlines all of its features, and here is a screenshot to give you a taste of what the output looks like:

Copyright © 2014 CyberNetNews.com

This article was written on May 30, 2006 by CyberNet.

Jake Ludington shows us how easy it is to download YouTube videos by using a site called KeepVid. Using KeepVid you enter the YouTube URL into the text box on the homepage and press “Download”. The site will then give you the download link you need to use in order to download the movie. It doesn’t get much easier than that, unless of course YouTube offered download links directly on their site.

KeepVid Homepage
News Source: Jake Ludington’s MediaBlab

Copyright © 2014 CyberNetNews.com

This article was written on December 11, 2006 by CyberNet.

Creating a fresh looking website can be time consuming but Weebly aims to make the chore a little less daunting. This AJAX site creator is loaded with simplicity so much so that almost anyone could jump in and start using it. Placing elements on the page is as easy as dragging and dropping them where you would like them to appear.

I have created a quick test page here that demonstrates the ability to create multiple column layouts. I also threw an RSS feed reader widget on the page that retrieves the news from this site and which makes it easy for you to gather news from several different sources. There isn’t really any content on the page but I only spent 2-minutes putting it together (3-minutes if you include signing up).

It is nice to be able to publish the site to a subdomain that you can choose (ours is cybernetnews.weebly.com). That means you can test the service and analyze whether the templates (currently 19 are available and 6 are pictured above) are right for you. If everything goes smoothly and you really like the end result you can just download what Weebly generated as a single ZIP file.

Here is a video from the developers that demonstrates the capabilities and features of Weebly:

I see this service becoming popular for people who are just looking to post a profile, resume, or create a quick site for a work/school project. This service is sure to grow as more themes are made available.

Thanks for the tip Radu!

Copyright © 2014 CyberNetNews.com