New YouTube Features?

Since when did YouTube show my viewing history overlaid on the video window of the video I just finished watching? I’ve never seen this before, and I’m on YouTube a lot. Is this new? Also, what’s up with the flashy "Next" button that pops up in the bottom right-hand corner of the video from time to time?

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Yahoo! announced today that they’ve inked a deal with Motorola to have Yahoo! services embedded on tens of millions of cell phones. The software system is branded as Yahoo! Go for Mobile, which is an integrated set of services that includes your Yahoo! e-mail, Yahoo! address book, and Yahoo! Search. This is going to be a bit different than the current Yahoo! Go platform (see above link), as this isn’t just making it easier to use Yahoo! services from your phone, they will already be there for you to use with a push of a button. If you Yahoo!, then you’re probably psyched. However, as a Google girl, it was the last line of the article that got my attention: "Yahoo rival Google Inc. (Nasdaq:GOOG - news) is racing to win similar positioning for its Web services through deals with handset makers and mobile carriers." A Google phone? Bring it on!

Zooomr announced a while back that they were giving bloggers free Pro accounts, but now they’ve taken it a step further. They’ve decided to make these free 2.5 GB Pro accounts! That gives you the ability to transfer 1700 pics per month. All you have to do is upload at least one photo to Zooomr (such as, ahem, the above), post it to your blog, then head back to their "Proitizer" page and type in the URL of your blog post. Bada-bing, bada-boom, you have 2.5 gigs. It’s a no-brainer.

If you love flickr, you might enjoy taking a peek at this new site
I found a few days ago via Lifehacker. The site is called flickrInspector, and it’s a search tool that displays publicly available data about flickr users including their user information, "interestingness", recently uploaded photos, some photo stats, their favorites, contacts, tags, sets, and more. Of course, the first thing I do when I find a site like this is look up myself. Let’s see, active 669 days, 146 photos, 21 contacts, 31 tags, and a flickr score of 1249. I have no idea what that means, but I doubt it’s good since I’m not much of a shutterbug. Still, pretty cool site, worth a look.

AOL just launched a new instant messenger today designed for business use called AIM Pro.  The serivce is integrated with Microsoft Outlook’s calendar and contact list. It also offers easy access to WebEx voice and video conferencing and collaboration services, which lets users show presentations, manage web meetings, and work on documents together in real time. Users can make phone calls using AIM Pro and all communications are encrypted for security. Best of all, it’s free. (Take that, Microsoft Live Communications Server!) So now, if you see someone at work IM’ing, they might actually be working!

Netflix users, aren’t you the coolest? You get to see the premiere episodes of two new dramas before they are broadcast: "Studio 60 on the Sunset Strip" and "Kidnapped" will be available for rental six weeks before the two shows debut. I don’t know if those shows are any good, but this is definately a first. Groundbreaking, even. TV shows on DVD before the series premiere? Great idea to generate buzz and develop a fan base. NBC, today, you make me proud.

Yipee! I just found the YouTube integration on Vox. I’m going to go post all the Lost Experience videos from YouTube.

I got a surprise in my inbox today - an invitation to try SixApart’s new service, Vox! If you haven’t heard already, Vox is a new blogging service that is designed to give you control over what you share and with whom you share it. Unlike TypePad or MoveAble Type, which are more professional tools, Vox aims to be more personal. If anything, Vox is more like LiveJournal, just better. More powerful, more customization, better tools.

So, the first thing I did was log in and set up my profile. With Vox, you can connect your flickr or  PhotoBucket account to Vox. You can also configure cross-posting from your current TypePad weblog. Also from your edit profile page, you can set up mobile posting as well as download the "XP Uploader," which really is just a registry file that allows you to upload multiple photos directly from your Windows XP computer.

From the "Explore" page, you can explore the Vox community — by tags, of course! From here, you can specifically search Vox for posts, audio, video, books, or photos. Apparently, you can (from the compose page) upload audio, video, or photos directly from your computer. You don’t actually upload books from your computer, though — when "posting books", you’re actually linking to Amazon, which posts a picture of the cover and a link to Amazon. Hmmm, I’ll have to see if this is integrated with the affiliate program. Also, when posting on Vox, you can tag your post and easily configure who is allowed to see it.

The Vox "Design" page lets you pick out a template to apply to your blog. For now, the selection is…ehhh. Most templates looks cutesy or just plain. Where are the "boy" templates? Vox won’t have myspace’s "uniqueness" factor unless people can create their own designs, or easily add designs others have created. I imagine there could be more templates coming as Vox gets closer to launching.

From the "Connect" page, you can search for other Vox users by name, email, or blog URL. Nice, but I’d like to see a way to import an address book. Who doesn’t have this feature these days? Heck, myspace has it. However, ahem, for the record, it only worked for me once at myspace, then never again.

Underneath your user photo, there’s a "neighborhood" link. From here, you can view your "friends pages," your "family’s pages," "friends & family," or your "entire neighborhood. This reminds me a lot of reading your LJ friends page, but without LJ’s custom groups.

Overall, Vox looks pretty good for a preview release. Clean, modern, easy, and Web 2.0ish. However, since SixApart bought LiveJournal, I’m wondering why create such a similar product? Granted, this is a very modern take on LJ, and yes, better tools, but the base concept is very much the same. Although there are now many "community" pages on LJ there are still just as many personal sites — sites which allow the posters to flag posts or their entire sites as "friends only." Does SixApart plan on porting their LJ’ers to Vox? Or are they just hoping they’ll switch if given free invites? Or maybe they just want to woo blogging newbies to this new community instead of having them join LJ? I’m not sure, but SixApart is marketing Vox’s privacy settings as if they this is something new (eg. "With Vox, we’ve given people control over what they share and who they share it with. We believe that control over privacy will give people the freedom to write and share with the people they care about.") I guess it’s just LJ done way better. LJ 2.0. They knew they could build a better one, so they said, "why not?" Hey, go SixApart. I love you guys. You know.

I’m posting some screenshots of Vox…on Vox. On TypePad, too.

If you’re the kind of person who generally gets tech support via message boards, then you might like this new tech support service called Qunu. Odd name, but interesting concept - their goal is to recreate the message board spirit, but in real-time via IM. So, instead of posting your question to a board and waiting on a response, you can use Qunu and get an expert’s answer sent back to you much quicker than via a message board posting. Qunu experts must run Jabber IM software, but Qunu users (the help seekers), just use the Qunu website. Somewhat like a search engine, a help seeker puts keywords into a search box, but instead of traditional search results, you’ll get a list of experts you can chat with. So far, over 1000 experts have signed up. Sounds good in theory, let’s see how it works out.

As of today, beta users of Microsoft’s Windows Live Messenger IM client (like me) now have the option to add Yahoo contacts to Messenger. Together the networks comprise 350 million accounts and is the first time two large, commercial networks joined forces. The proposed merge was announced nine months ago, and has been anxiously awaited by many users who have buddies on both networks. To chat with your Yahoo! buddies, you just add them as a contact as you would anyone else. I’m surprised there is not a way to import your current Yahoo! buddy list at this time, that was certainly a feature I was expecting to see. However, according to the Live Messenger blog, they remind us: "Remember, this is only the first version.  And though we are planning to add many cross-network features in the future, this should be more than enough to get you started." So perhaps this will be one of the upcoming features. I hope so!