This article was written on July 31, 2007 by CyberNet.
If you frequently upload videos to multiple video sharing sites like YouTube or MySpace Videos, you’re going to love Hey!Spread. Hey! Spread is a fairly new video uploading service that “sneezes” your videos, or spreads them to multiple sites with just a few simple steps which means you’ll save yourself a lot of time. The more services your video is uploaded to, the better chance you’ll have that it will become popular which is why Hey! Spread will be useful for some of you. Currently they support several video networks including YouTube, MySpace, Google Videos, Yahoo Videos, Dailymotion, Photobucket, Metacafe, and others.
So not only can you spread your own videos uploaded from your hard drive, but now a new feature just added yesterday will allow you to cross-post videos that are already uploaded to a video sharing site. For example, if there was a video clip on YouTube that you really liked and wanted to spread to MySpace, you’d just need the URL for the video and you’d be able to use Hey! Spread to post the video to MySpace or any other supported service. It’s really a very simple process and makes copying videos from sites like YouTube to other video sites easy.
This article was written on October 29, 2007 by CyberNet.
When NBC Universal and News Corp announced that they were teaming up back in March, most people assumed that they were doing so to take on YouTube by launching a video sharing site. As it turns out, they had no intention of competing with YouTube and instead had their eyes set on creating a place where people would be able to view premium video content online. Eventually they named the service Hulu, and just yesterday they took the first step necessary to bring it out to the public by launching a private beta. All it takes is an email address, and you can sign up to get an invite.
Hulu has a lot going for them, especially when you take into consideration the fact that they’ve teamed with AOL, Comcast, MSN, MySpace and Yahoo who will eventually have the premium content available on their sites as well with their own customized video player. They also own the content that will be available which is another huge advantage. When you take a look at the line-up of shows that they’ll be offering, the service is even more impressive with shows like:
Prison Break
House
Bones
Heroes
Scrubs
24
My Name is Earl
and more…
So with a great list of shows in high quality and what appears to be a good interface, is there anything that could prevent Hulu from being a success? NewTeeVee points out a few of their weaknesses – among them are their resistance to anything other than big media shows, and the lack of some way to get viewers to participate in the experience like writing a review for an episode. Another big weakness is that all of the content is ad-supported, they don’t offer an alternative like a monthly subscription to view shows ad-free.
Certainly they’ve got weaknesses, but their strong points are just that, strong. Not only do they have the TV shows, but they also have videos and the option for users to email or even embed the content to share with others. This week they’ll be letting in thousands of beta testers to try it out with even more welcomed in each week after. TV programming on the web is here, and I think it’s here to stay. I’ve submitted my email address to request an invite, and now I can’t wait to try it out. It certainly sounds impressive but leaves me wondering, will Hulu will put a dent in Joost’s user-base?
If you’ve ever wanted to give the gift of lolcats, or wished you could share viral videos with your friends over the holidays, QRapping Paper is designed to let you do it. This special wrapping paper is covered with Quick Response (QR) codes on the outside that, when scanned with a smartphone or another QR scanner, will direct you to Web videos to get you in the spirit of the season. Among the selections are drunken carolers, someone’s fruitcake smoothie, and more.
Each 20″ by 30″ sheet of QRapping paper will cost you $19.99 retail, so it’s definitely not the cheapest way of wrapping a gift, but just imagine the fun your gift recipient will have when they get this present under the tree – and how much time they’ll spend scanning QR codes instead of opening the actual box.
The end of last week was Black Friday, and this past Monday was Cyber Monday – a much more civilized holiday, where instead of lining up outside stores at midnight in the cold, we all head to the office and waste thousands of collective hours of productivity shopping online and eating reheated Thanksgiving leftovers for lunch. Naturally, Black Friday spawned a number of its own videos this week, and we’ll get into that later, but it wasn’t the only hot video on YouTube.
Craig Ferguson treated us to the “Lost” episode of Dr. Who, Call of Duty: Black Ops met Pokemon and picked up some pretty upbeat electronic music along the way, and the ninja from Ask A Ninja weighed in on the week’s events. Head behind the jump to see.
Zoom has been known for arranging high quality microphones into small packages to make audio recording easier, especially for professionals who need a portable device but crisp and clear sound.
Now, the company is finally shipping the Zoom Q3HD Camcorder that we previewed back in October, which is capable of shooting full 1080p HD video at 30 frames-per-second (and 720p HD video at 30 or 60 frames-per-second) and features Zoom’s characteristic twin-microphone design also seen in the H1 Recorder.
The Q3HD is available at retailers nationwide and online for $299.99 list price, and will ship in time for the holidays.
Good news, Boston: your city’s Museum of Science today announced that it will reopen the Charles Hayden Planetarium (not to be confused with the cheerleader on Heroes) on Sunday, February 13, 2011. It will then offer the most technologically advanced digital theater in New England. Powered by full-dome video and audio systems, as well as a new Zeiss Starmaster projector, the reopening will culminate a $9 million renovation project.
As part of the grand re-opening, the museum will premier Undiscovered Worlds: The Search Beyond Our Sun, an original astronomy show that explores the study of exoplanets, meaning planets outside our solar system. The film looks into whether planets like Earth are common or rare.
This week the birds and pigs from Angry Birds finally decided to sit down and make peace. You can see the results of the negotiations behind the jump. Also this week, a few folks with a little extra cash on their hands decided to make the most epic Thanksgiving meal they could think of, and I lost count halfway through of how many animals they used. At least they shared with their friends.
This article was written on January 15, 2008 by CyberNet.
Now that people have had time to settle down from the MacWorld event this morning we thought we would take a look at some of the buzz from around the Internet. We’ll checkout the new iPhone firmware, show a video of the new MacBook Air, and give our opinion on the video rentals.
Overall, I would have to say that the keynote was rather disappointing. There was no “one more thing” this time around, and a majority of what was announced had already been leaked by this point. All we really found out was the finer details.
Luckily we managed to update our iPhones with the new 1.1.3 firmware before the service went down this afternoon. I did it using the new iTunes 7.6 and Ashley did it using iTunes 7.5, so some of the other sites are wrong when they say you need the new version of iTunes in order to get the new firmware. If you are experiencing issues connecting to Apple’s servers for the firmware update head on over to Engadget who has posted some direct download links.
As far as the features go I would say that Apple did a wonderful job making this a worthwhile update. It would have been nice to have copy and paste functionality, but the advanced home screen customization and pseudo-GPS for the maps really make the update shine. Being able to have up to 9 home screens is more than what I would ever need…that comes out to 144 icons!
The only thing I’m not all that fond of with the new firmware is how the iPhone comes up with an icon for websites you bookmark on your home screen. It snaps a screenshot of the upper-left corner of the screen, scales it down, and adds some polish to it. The problem is that a lot of my “made for iPhone” sites all look the same, and I wish there was a way to assign a specific image to be used for the icon.
I’m keeping my fingers crossed that the Software Development Kit (SDK) will really be ready next month. Then we’ll see true third-party apps breathe new life into the iPhone.
P.S. I do feel sorry for the existing iPod Touch users out there who have to fork out $20 for the update, but I guess Apple isn’t getting any kickbacks from those owners via AT&T.
Here’s a movie posted by Apple demonstrating the new iPhone 1.1.3 firmware:
–Movie Rentals–
I was pretty excited about the movie rental system ever since news of it had been leaked. I thought that Apple would surely do this the right way, but I think they came up short in some aspects. The fact that you get 30 days to start watching the movie after purchasing it is nice. Then after you hit the play button you have 24 hours to finish it, which also isn’t that bad. The thing that really gets me is that the videos won’t be available until 30 days after they are on DVD. That probably just ruined any chance of me actually using the service.
Here’s my line of thinking: If the movies were on iTunes one month after hitting the theaters, which you know I hate going to, I’d have no reason to pirate them. What’s the point in downloading a crappy CAM or Telesync if I can get a DVD quality version in one month?
–MacBook Air–
Apple’s new MacBook Air prances in at $1799 for a starting price, and if you want the 64GB Solid State Drive that will run an additional $1300! It’s sleek, small, and functional all rolled into one package, but Apple forgot to mention one thing. While the battery life is a touted 5 hours, the question of how to replace the battery was never brought up…and for a good reason. It turns out that the MacBook Air will have to be shipped back to Apple to get the battery replaced! Some things are just too good to be true.
I do have to say that the multi-touch trackpad looks rather sweet. You can checkout everything the MacBook Air can do in this video:
So there’s our MacWorld followup. In all it was a disappointing show, but Steve Jobs did say that there are still 50 weeks left in the year. The real question is whether they are going to produce something worthwhile in that timeframe.
The news this week has been clearly dominated by horror stories of the Transportation Security Administration’s (TSA) “enhanced screening techniques,” which either involve you walking in front of a Backscatter X-Ray machine that can see clear through your clothing and that many people consider a massive invasion of privacy, or the aggressive patdowns you’re subjected to if you opt out of the machine.
More on that below, but it wasn’t the only thing floating around YouTube this week: we also got our first trailer for the upcoming Green Lantern movie, and someone wasted a ton of money putting an iPhone 4, a new Windows Phone 7 device, and a brand new T-Mobile G2 on a hot grill to see which one grilled the fastest. Some people have a lot of spare cash, clearly.
This article was written on August 23, 2008 by CyberNet.
Win; Mac; Linux The weekend is here, and I’m sure you’re wondering how you can burn through hours and hours of your precious time by doing nothing productive. Like always, we’ve got you covered. Go download the free Phun program, and let your imagination run wild.
What is it? Phun is a 2D physics emulation application that will let you build simple or complex designs, and then watch them work. You can use boxes, circles, lines, and more to create geeky works of art. This video demonstration will give you a better idea of what I’m talking about:
Do all of those things look too simple? Then maybe you should try to tackle a bigger project by building an automated “machine” like this or this.
Learning the ins and outs of Phun might take a little time, but to get you started there are some tutorials you can follow. They walk you through how to build things like towers, cars, rockets, and more.
This is site is run by Sascha Endlicher, M.A., during ungodly late night hours. Wanna know more about him? Connect via Social Media by jumping to about.me/sascha.endlicher.
Good news, Boston: your city’s 
Win; 
Mac; 
Linux 
