A Musical Web Browser/Media Player

Yes, another web browser, but this one looks pretty cool. Built on the Firefox engine, Songbird’s tagline is "Songbird plays the Web," and here’s why:  Songbird lets you view webpages "as dynamic playlists that it can play, save, or automatically download every day." That alone would make Songbird a standout product, but Songbird real strength is that it will play your music!  The Songbird 0.1 Proof-of-Concept was released just a few days ago, so you can download it now and check it out.

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Google has updated the privacy policy for Google Talk, mostly to add information about the integration with Gmail. What’s interesting about this is not the changes themselves, but how they’re displayed. Google has released a page showing the changes - with old lines marked through in red and new lines underlined in green. Transparent and honest - what a brilliant idea.

It has been rumored that Google and Dell are in talks and are close to a deal that would involve Google paying Dell $1 billion over three years for the rights to have their software pre-installed on Dell computers. I wonder if this would include Firefox, since they are now somewhat affliated via AdSense. Of course the Google Toolbar would be included and perhaps Google Earth? What other Googlesque products would be involved in this deal?

Did you notice a new link in your Gmail today? Gmail Chats is a new feature that has just been added to the Gmail web email service. You don’t need to download any software in order for this to work. You will soon see a new list of contacts, called "Quick Contacts" (anyone seeing this already?), and clicking on these contacts will start an IM session. The IM sessions will then open up in the browser, and both IE and Firefox are supported, with other browser support coming soon. For voice chats, you will still need to use the Google Talk application. This is EXTREMELY cool.

By the way, if you still don’t have a Gmail account, comment here and I will give you one!

I just got a sneak peek at a new and fascinating communication tool called Stickam, which officially launches on February 13th. The application brings live streaming video, video conferencing and multimedia to web pages and blogs. This is one powerful video communications player, and it offers these services with unlimited bandwidth and nothing to download - you just cut and paste the JavaScript or HTML code to an area of your website. All this, and it’s free, too!

People! Live videoconferencing on your blog without having to download or install any software on your computer!

Here’s the breakdown of what Stickam has to offer:

• Easy to install with no downloads.  Simply cut and paste the JavaScript or HTML code to your Web page to enable live streaming video and video chat.
• Completely free with 500MB of storage for videos, photos and music.  Generous per file limit of 100MB for videos and 5MB for images
• Unlimited bandwidth allows for high frame rate images that can be viewed by a virtually unlimited number of people at the same time.
• Video will play on any operating system including Linux, Windows and Mac and can be viewed by site visitors whether they have their own Stickam  player or not
• Upload photos, music and video clips to your Stickam  player that can be viewed anywhere, anytime.  Users can even upload media straight from their cell phone.
• Video conferencing allows users to connect live with family and friends anywhere in the world.  Less expensive and more interactive than a phone call.
• Works with a wide range of popular Webcams.
• Stickam  Player is available in four different sizes. 160×160, 160×200, 160×400 and 480×240.
• Works with Macromedia Flash Player 7 or higher.
• Stickam  allows users to record video straight from their Webcams for use on their sites.
• Stickam  works with Internet Explorer 6.0 or higher for Windows, and Internet Explorer 5.2 or higher for Macintosh.  Users must have Macromedia Flash Player 7 installed.

This is an amazing tool. With everything that it can do, it’s unbelievably easy to use. I already logged in, went live, and chatted with other online users. I saw it used on myspace. I saw it on people’s blogs. This is about to take the internet by storm, you have to see it to believe it…so, look to the right-hand side of this page!

According to this article at the Times of London, there are some major speculations going on about the plans Google has for the dark fiber they have been buying up. And besides the dark fiber purchases, it has been reported that Google has also bought shipping containers, and they put data centers inside of them. It sounds like they have some big plans for something, but what? These new speculations boil down to something like this: Google is building a second internet.

One internet is just not enough, I guess. Besides, Google needs something to run all those Google Cubes on, right? And with ISPs like SBC seriously proposing toll charges for moving data across their pipes, the Googlenet’s time has come. So, here’s my suggestion for the Googlenet: make it free. Make your money off of your advertising, but keep your internet free.

So, I’ve been messing around with the beta version of BlogMad, and so far, so good. The site really has some potential, but it’s not ready to open its doors yet. There are going to be some nice features at BlogMad, some of which I can’t disclose right now. However, there is one big reason to switch to BlogMad, and if I haven’t told you before, that reason is the ratio. The BlogMad ratio is 1:1. You surf one blog, and one person will surf yours in return. Some have said this cannot be done, but let me assure you, these guys have a plan.

Besides, Jeff was mean to me, so won’t you join me in a happier place?

So, thanks to a friend, I got an invite to the Live Messenger 8.0 beta. After a quick download, I immediately logged in. The first thing I noticed about the new Messenger is that seeing all of my online contacts was difficult due to the reduced size of the buddy list window. There are so many features that actually seeing your buddies was obviously given a reduced priority, an odd choice for an IM program. A good 1/4 of the interface was given to displaying my name, my picture, and a link that lets me customize my online message. Another 1/4 is given to the "MSN Video" feature, which, by the way, doesn’t work if Firefox is your default browser — it just opens a tab to a page suggesting that you download Internet Explorer 6. It must be awfully hard to write code that knows to make sure that when you click "Play Video," this needs to open up an IE window. In fact, Messenger is all about pimping Microsoft products. You can turn on a "What I’m Listening To" feature that will display info about what music you are listening to in your Windows Media Player. There’s an icon that links you to your Hotmail or MSN mail account. Another icon takes you to your Spaces account.

There is a nice feature called "Sharing Folders" where you can automatically share out content that other Messenger buddies can access. A message pops up when you turn this feature on reminding you to respect copyright law, which makes me wonder…can you share out your mp3s? Will "someone" be watching this to make sure no one is breaking the law?

But for every nice feature, there is an annoyance. Like why, WHY!!!, are there still buttons on the left that are nothing more than ads for other websites (Ebay, Match.com, MSNBC, Rhapsody, MSN, Xbox)? These ads just take up space and frankly, give no value to me as an IM user. I’m not clicking them…ever. I can change their order, but I cannot remove them. Ugh.

Back to nice features: hovering your mouse arrow over a contact displays some helpful buttons - you can click to IM, start a voice call, start a video chat session, or start sharing your folders with them.

So, it’s a mixed review from me. Some good stuff, some bad. Overall, I like it better than MSN Messenger, but I’m not ditching Trillian Pro for it. Maybe I’m just not a Microsoft girl…but you guys knew that already, didn’t you?

If you haven’t checked out Gtalkr lately, it’s time to return! Gtalkr is a way to log into your GoogleTalk account online (via their website), instead of using the GoogleTalk program. When you use Gtalkr to chat with your buddies, your IM conversations are saved and are then searchable…so it’s like you can Google your IMs! But Gtalkr is so much more than just instant messaging. You can also add content, like RSS feeds, to your Gtalkr page. Several popular feeds are already available to add with a click of a button, or you can add your own. Other Gtalkr extensions let you add things like Gmail, Yahoo Maps, and a To Do List ("Make a List").

New features just added are a video search using a You Tube extension and a flickr slideshow extension that lets you either search flickr for photos or view a slide show of someone’s photos by entering in their username. Even cooler, the flickr logo appears next to your contact’s username in your contact list if they are also on flickr. All you have to do is click the logo, and their slideshow appears. Not only that, but even if you’ve just invited people to join Gmail or if they exist in your Gmail contacts, you will still see the flickr icon, so this feature is not limited to people using GoogleTalk. This is a great example of where Google builds the back end, and talented developers build a front-end that maximizes the usefulness of the API.

Sometimes, technology really seems like magic.