Nov 18

Zoho Impresses Me Even More By Implementing My Feedback

Posted in: Today's Chili, Web Sites

This article was written on November 03, 2006 by CyberNet.

As if I didn’t love the services that Zoho already offers they now go and impress me even more. A few weeks ago I used the Zoho Polls on a post regarding which Firefox extensions you use. The list of extensions quickly got very long but Zoho only allowed you to display the poll as one size, which looked something like this:

Note: Do not continue to the next page if you are using Internet Explorer 7, it will freeze your browser for some reason. I have just contacted Zoho and will hopefully hear back from them soon.

I’m sure you see now how hard it is to scroll through and see all of the options. The poll is just displayed in an iframe and I thought it would be great if I could manually resize the iframe and have the poll grow/shrink depending on whatever size I wanted. They responded to me the next day and said that they were working on a solution. After a few more days they emailed me again and said that they completed it!

It is absolutely perfect now and I can make the frame as large as I want. That means you can even make it big enough so that users don’t even have to scroll. Now users can easily vote and view the results without ever leaving your site. To see what the new poll box looks like go checkout the previous post that I made using it.

I think I’ll be using these a lot more as a quick way to get feedback on what users think about a topic. Since it is only using an iframe it can also be displayed in many feed readers (if you publish your full RSS feed).

So, I guess my question for everyone is whether you want to see more polls on our site?

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Nov 17

Viacom Cracking the Whip, Demands YouTube Remove 100,000 Videos

Posted in: Google, Today's Chili, videos, Web Sites, YouTube

This article was written on February 02, 2007 by CyberNet.

Viacom who owns brands like BET, MTV, VH1, Nickelodeon, Comedy Central, Spike TV and several others, has demanded that YouTube remove 100,000 videos.  That’s over 1.2 billion streams that are to be removed immediately. According to several sources, Viacom had been negotiating with YouTube for several months.  Apparently there were disagreements or the deal wasn’t going anywhere for Viacom to make such a demand.

In a statement from Viacom, they say:

“Filtering tools promised repeatedly by YouTube and Google have not been put in place, and they continue to host and stream vast amounts of unauthorized video. YouTube and Google retain all of the revenue generated from this practice, without extending fair compensation to the people who have expended all of the effort and cost to create it. The recent addition of YouTube-served content to Google Video Search simply compounds this issue. …. Our hope is that YouTube and Google will support a fair and authorized distribution model that allows consumers to continue to enjoy our very popular content now and in the future.”

Just last week, Google announced that YouTube video results would appear in the Google Video search index. It’s interesting that Viacom points that out in their statement above as compounding their issues with YouTube.  Now it’s not just about YouTube anymore, with Google holding the reigns. Eventually the lawsuits will start flowing in, and Google will have to make an executive decision over what to do with copyrighted material that consistently makes its’ way into the video results.

So, say good-bye to the loads of Daily Show clips, The Colbert Show, and other popular shows that are floating around YouTube, like the Bill Gates episode with over 467,000 views. They’re still up as of now, but you can bet they won’t be there for long (Another source for these shows is www.colbertondemand.com :) ).

Source: paidContent.org

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Nov 16

Radiohead Teams with Aniboom for Video Contest

Posted in: Music, Today's Chili, Web Sites

This article was written on March 18, 2008 by CyberNet.

Radiohead is an English alternative rock band that has been around since 1992.  Last year a big deal was made with their In Rainbows album because they were the first to sell it through their own site as a digital download and then the buyers chose the price they wanted to pay (this is similar to the approach that Nine Inch Nails is taking with their latest album). Now a big deal is being made over how Radiohead is choosing to produce a music video for the previously mentioned album… they’re turning to their fans and asking them to do the work!

It’s being called The Radiohead In Rainbows Contest, and unlike most music videos out there, the group wants an animated video. To do this, they’ve partnered with a fairly recent start-up called Aniboom. The best way to describe Aniboom is that they’re the YouTube of animation, a “cross-media, cross-platform animation content project which addresses wide audiences through a range of genres, techniques and means.”

aniboom video contest

The competition started yesterday and anybody is able to upload a storyboard (whether it be sketches or a fully developed animated video clip). Starting on April 7th, users will be able to rate the storyboards that were submitted.  From there, 10 finalists will be selected and then given $1,000 to create a one minute video clip that is based upon their storyboard using songs from the In Rainbows album. Once again, users will vote and the five highest ranked clips will be presented to Radiohead. They’ll select the winner who will receive $10,000 to create a full music video.

Given all of the amateur video producers out there who submit some pretty decent content to sites like YouTube, it wouldn’t be surprising in the least to see other musicians turn to their fans and the plethora of online media sources to produce their videos.

Source: Read Write Web

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Nov 12

Yahoo Makes Video Site

Posted in: Today's Chili, Web Sites

This article was written on May 18, 2006 by CyberNet.

Yahoo Makes Video Site
 

It looks like Yahoo doesn’t want to get left behind by Google so they will be launching a video service. They will retrieve videos from all around the web and they also accept user submissions. Right now the site isn’t too fantastic because most people will just see the Yahoo Video Search, but the screenshot above is what the service will look like for everyone after a little while.

This should give some video services like Google Video and YouTube a hurting but I don’t think it will be enough to cripple them.

Yahoo Video Homepage

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Nov 11

Dear Google, Thanks for a Glimpse in the Past!

Posted in: Google, search, Today's Chili, Web Sites

This article was written on October 01, 2008 by CyberNet.

google search 2001.pngIn celebration of Google’s 10th birthday they decided to give us all an awesome glimpse into the past. What they’ve gone and done is bring back the search engine just like it was in 2001. I’m not talking just the looks either… the full search index, too! Any searches you perform on that special page will pull up the same results you would have received back in 2001.

Why is this such a big deal? For me it’s fun because it’s like reading a newspaper from 7-years ago. Just try a search for something like Firefox or Flickr and you’ll see what I mean. Or take a look at some of the examples provided by Google:

Amazingly enough, hidden in a corner beneath Larry’s and Sergey’s original lab coats, we found a vintage search index in mint condition. We dusted it off and took it for a spin, gobsmacked to see how different the web was in early 2001. “iPod” did not refer to a music player, “youtube” was nonsense, and if you were looking for “Michael Phelps,” chances are you meant the scientist, not the swimmer. “Wikipedia” was brand new. Remember “hanging chads“?

If you get clever enough you may find some interesting search results. For example, when searching for the word “iPhone” I came across a ZDNet article talking about a $500 phone that could do email an Internet access, but it wasn’t exactly something you carry in your pocket:

infogear iphone.png

Thanks Google! It was a lot of fun reminiscing over the1.3 billion pages you had crawled back in 2001. Hopefully you’ll decide against ever taking down this piece of history… because 10-years from now this will likely be even more funny!

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Nov 08

Remember CanGoogleHearMe.com?

Posted in: Today's Chili, Web Sites

This article was written on March 20, 2008 by CyberNet.

cangooglehearme

It’s been a little over a year since we wrote about a site called Can Google Hear Me? As a refresher, the site was started by a guy on an adventure who used it to document his journey trying to get Google to hear his “great” idea. He got on a plane and headed to California so he could pitch his idea to the folks at Google, hoping they’d like it and bring him on to help make his dream a reality. People including myself and some of you, were following the story pretty closely to see how it would all pan out.

Fast forward to today when Jack of all Trades sent us a tip about a service that recently launched into beta called BookLamp.org. I went to check it out, scrolled down the page, and lo and behold there was the “CanGoogleHearMe.com” logo. As it turns out, this is the project that Aaron Stanton went and pitched to Google. Apparently Google didn’t see the value that Aaron did because they never brought him onboard. He finally launched the service on his own last week.

book lamp So what is BookLamp.org? Well, it’s described as “the Pandora” of books. Just like Pandora recommends music based upon your tastes, BookLamp.org recommends books that are written with the similar tone, tense, perspective, action level, etc., as other books you’ve read and enjoyed. They created the service by coming up with a way to scan a book to determine the writing style of the author, which they say is arguably the most important way to determine if you’ll like a book or not.

This could potentially be an awesome service for book-lovers, however they only have 179 books in their database. If you haven’t read one of those books, you’re pretty much out of luck. At this point they’re trying to determine if there’s enough interest in the service to seek venture capital or partner with a company who already has a database of scanned books. While it sounds great, I’m doubtful they’ll be successful, and I’m usually one to be optimistic. The bottom line is that more people listen to music than read books which is partially why Pandora is such a hit. Any thoughts?

Thanks for the tip Jack of all Trades!

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Nov 07

Hot Deal: Pingdom Website Checker Free for 1 Year ($120 Value)

Posted in: Today's Chili, Web Sites

This article was written on December 22, 2006 by CyberNet.

Pingdom

Last week Ashley discussed two free services that would monitor your website for downtime and Pingdom is similar to both of those. The most obvious difference is that Pingdom’s service is not free ($9.95 per month) but for the next 16-hours you can scoop up this hot deal where you get a full year of the service for free (valued at $120)! Once on that page just select the Pingdom Full option and it will ask you for some of your information. There is no credit card required so you don’t even have to worry about canceling after the year is up.

The screenshot that I took above demonstrates the customization options for each of the five websites that you are allowed to check. Unlike the free services, Pingdom allows you to check the website as low as every one minute and it is done from multiple locations around the world (3 in the United States, 1 in Australia, and 1 in India).

If your website does happen to go down you can customize whether to get notified via email or SMS text messages. Your given 20 SMS credits to begin with and after that you’ll have to prepay for more, which ranges from $0.35 to $0.45 per text message depending on how many you purchase in advance. I believe that most of you should be fine with the default 5 website checks (which are included in this deal for free) but if you need more of those that will run you $24 for each additional site.

You have 16-hours left to grab this deal, so I highly recommend that you go and sign-up for it even if you don’t have a website. Who knows, maybe you’ll start one within the next year and wish you had a great service like this!

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Nov 05

AMD LIVE! Media Vault Gives You 25GB Of Free Storage

Posted in: Today's Chili, Web Sites

This article was written on September 15, 2006 by CyberNet.

AMD LIVE Media Vault If you’re not into using AOL’s XDrive then maybe you’ll find a little more comfort with the AMD LIVE! Media Vault. The most obvious benefit of AMD’s offering is the increased 25GB file storage that they allow…but don’t forget to take a look at the fine print.

They let you upload/backup as often as you would like but you have to stay under the 25GB limit. However, you are limited to just 1GB of downloads per month! So what happens if you upload 25GB of photos or movies and you want to retrieve them all? Simple, it will either take you more than 2 years to get all of that information back or you could upgrade to the Elite plan ($9.95 per month) which will let you download 25GB of data in a month’s time.

There is also a backup/synchronization solution available that gives you a peace of mind by storing your information at a remote location. Even though the download limit is a bummer it is still a great deal. If you have a large photo library you can keep a backup on the Media Vault and if anything happens to your computer I’m sure it will be worth paying the $9.95 to get the pictures back. I think that’s what I’ll use the service for since I have over 6GB of photos and I don’t feel like splitting them up between multiple XDrive accounts.

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Nov 03

MySpace Enters Social News Market Today (Thursday)

Posted in: Today's Chili, Web Sites

This article was written on April 19, 2007 by CyberNet.

MySpace is going from social network to social news today as they add on the addition of “MySpace News.” They’re expecting that their 100+ million users will make it the next social news success story as users will be voting on their favorite news items.

It’s been labeled the “Digg Killer” simply because it’s a social type of news service, however MySpace news will serve a much different purpose.  Those millions of MySpace users go to MySpace on a daily basis to socialize with their friends first, maybe watch a video, or check on their favorite bands.The news will be a secondary service that not everyone will take interest in.

Myspacenews2

Digg users on the other hand, go to Digg for a more focused purpose– to read, vote, submit, and comment on the news. Labeling MySpace News a Digg-Killer really is exaggerating it. And un-like Digg, for now anyways, it is not user submitted content. MySpace will be pulling it in from RSS feeds that they have selected.

Myspacenews

The screenshots above came from TechCrunch. You’ll notice that each user can vote on an article and give it a ranking between 1–5. With 25 main categories and 300 sub-categories, it sounds like they’ll be covering just about everything.

Why they chose Thursday as their big launch day, I don’t know. But it’s supposed to debut shortly at news.myspace.com. For now it’s password protected.

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Nov 03

Free Packet Loss Test

Posted in: Today's Chili, Web Sites, xbox live

This article was written on October 27, 2009 by CyberNet.

ping packet loss jitter.pngHave you ever been in the situation where you’re left wondering whether your Internet connection is messing with the quality of your VoIP calls or your online video game experience? You can sit there and test your bandwidth all you want, but the fact is that the speed of your Internet connection might not be the culprit.

The creators of SpeedTest.net, my favorite bandwidth testing site, have also created a new PingTest.net site. Its goal is to test aspects that are important to services like Vonage and Xbox Live, which need almost zero packet loss for you not to experience any stuttering, buffering, lag, and/or delays.

When you run a test on the site you’ll get three different types of information: packet loss, ping response, and jitter…

  • Packet Loss – Much as it sounds, if you have anything less than complete success in transmitting and receiving “packets” of data then you are experiencing this problem with your Internet connection. It can mean much slower download and upload speeds, poor quality VoIP audio, pauses with streaming media and what seems like time warping in games — your connection may even come to a total standstill! Packet loss is a metric where anything greater than 0% should cause concern.
  • Ping – This measurement tells how long it takes a “packet” of data to travel from your computer to a server on the Internet and back. Whenever you experience delayed responses in Internet applications – this would be due to a higher than desired ping. Similar to packet loss, lower is better when it comes to ping. A result below 100 ms should be expected from any decent broadband connection.
  • Jitter – Jitter is merely the variance in measuring successive ping tests. Zero jitter means the results were exactly the same every time, and anything above zero is the amount by which they varied. Like the other quality measurements, a lower jitter value is better. And while some jitter should be expected over the Internet, having it be a small fraction of the ping result is ideal.

The next time you’re having performance problems with Xbox Live, Vonage, Skype, or any other service hopefully PingTest.net will be there to help pinpoint whether it’s a bandwidth problem, slow response times, or packet loss.

PingTest.net Homepage

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