It's Vudu magic



Here's a set-top box that plays Internet-delivered movies on your TV; solid movie selection includes major Hollywood studio titles in the same week they hit DVD; no monthly fees; very good video and audio quality; no waiting--movies start immediately; excellent onscreen interface and scroll-wheel remote; simple setup and configuration. Go to Vudu.

Scaling the Social Web

Move over, MySpace. Online players from media giant Viacom to auctioneer eBay are adding networking features for their users

Facebook CEO visits Microsoft

Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg was spotted Tuesday in Seattle, headed for meetings with executives at Microsoft.

Sling Media is Bought

EchoStar’s $380 million purchase of Sling Media once again raises the question of whether a consumer TV-device company can exist as a standalone entity. History has not been kind to such companies trying to break out from the startup field. Akimbo anyone?

Artists 'draw on air' to create 3D illustrations

By putting on a virtual reality mask, holding a stylus in one hand and a tracking device in the other, an artist can draw 3D objects in the air with unprecedented precision. This new system is called “Drawing on Air,” and researchers have designed the interface to be intuitive and provide the necessary control for artists to illustrate complicated artistic, scientific, and medical subjects.

Business by Twitter

Mansueto Digital President Ed Sussman chats with expert tech blogger and videocaster about Twitter, the fastest growing application in Internet history. Scoble sees services like Twitter, where users can update snippets from their lives — through text, images, and video — as the next great marketing tool. It’s just that marketers haven’t quite caught on yet.

Vator.tv is a catalyst for innovation. It is a professional network and marketplace for ideas and businesses. Anyone, across all industries, at any stage, can share ideas, products, services and businesses with the rest of the world, mainly through video.

People use Vator.tv to pitch their ideas, businesses, skillsets or needs, such as capital, partner or staffing requirements. Hence, the tagline, "What's your pitch?" Through these pitches, people on Vator.tv can network, exchange knowledge and collaborate with other people who can help those ideas get to the next level. People use Vator.tv to get their ideas or needs discovered or to find, discover and connect with others in networks of interest.

Meet the couple behind Bebo

In the United States, Bebo may not be a household word, but in the UK, Ireland, New Zealand and Australia it is well known. In those countries, Bebo is the most popular social network, attracting some 34 million registered users globally. I sat down with husband-and-wife founders Michael …

Yahoo's Upcoming New Social Network

Yahoo's rumored social network, dubbed "Mash," has arrived. The company started inviting people outside the company to test it on Friday, the company says in a blog.

(Credit: Yahoo)

Mash is different from other social networks in that you can start profiles for your friends and "open" your own profile to friends you trust, according to the Mash blog. What that means, exactly, is still a bit unclear. You can also reportedly customize your profile or friends' profiles with other apps, ala Facebook.

"One last note before you jump in: Mash is still pretty raw--there are bugs and we haven't gotten to several of the features it really should have. We need to hear from you about where to focus our efforts," writes Will Aldrich, the head of Mash.

Joost and Copycats



The Joost look and feel is being widely copied by others, even before the company officially launches.

Last week the second Joost look-alike popped up: DNAStream. Like the first Joost clone, created by Paul Yanez, it basically appropriates the Joost look and feel and presents it in a web browser through a Flash interface (Joost itself is available only as a download). Unlike Yanez’s version, DNAStream is presenting itself as a business and doesn’t talk about Joost at all. DNAStream is shown above on the right, next to Joost. Read rest of article here.

Multiply Lands $16.6 Million Series B

Social network Multiply has taken $16.6 million in Series B funding. The round was led by VantagePoint Venture Partners with Point Judith Capital and Transcosmos Investments also participating.

As part of the deal ex-Chairman of Intermix Media (the original owners of MySpace) David Scott Carlick will join Multiply’s board.

Google Expected To Launch Wiki And Presentation Services This Week

Several signs are pointing to the imminent launch of Google Wiki and the company's long-awaited presentation service at this week's Office 2.0 conference in San Francisco.

The biggest indicators are history and vague comments by Google officials. Last year's Office 2.0 brought the launch of Google Docs and Spreadsheets, and Jonathan Rochelle, the product manager for Google Spreadsheets, will also be at hand for the opening panel at the conference kickoff on Thursday. Between this, an almost-demo by Google's CEO Eric Schmidt of the presentation application, as well as a post on the Official Google Blog that presentations would be making their way to everyone "this summer," and we should be seeing something new as early as Thursday.

The new wiki application from Google would fill out its online office suite, and give Google Apps a little more appeal for small- and mid-size business customers who want a consolidated wiki solution. The launch would also coincide with the anniversary of Google's acquisition of wiki service JotSpot last October. Considering JotSpot served up multiple tiers of service to serve casual to business users, the model could follow suit with Google's four flavors of Google Apps, including their business and enterprise solutions.

More to come.

Vcasmo

There are a few online video editors available right now, and there are also several slide show tools online. Vcasmo is both. It's designed to display video alongside a PowerPoint slide show. It fills a highly specific need, and it does it well.

VCASMO is "online presentation" tool that build a new communication experience based on "multimedia + slide". The tool give users more expressive power, you can show your work to lot of people in a more simple, more interesting way.

Wikirage Does Live Zeitgiest For Wikipedia

If you're a fan of Google's zeitgeists, or whenever Wikipedia publishes their list of the most popular pages, you'll get a kick out of Wikirage. The service scours the latest edits on Wikipedia to find out which items are getting the most editing attention. It then publishes the list in a top 100, which you can browse by hour, day, week, and month. Each link goes straight to the Wikipedia page in question, and offers a pretty fascinating look at what's going on inside the service.

Touchgraph Shows Connectivity Between Websites

The TouchGraph Google Browser shows connectivity between websites in a visual fashion.

The service pulls in data from Google’s database of related sites, delivering an interactive visual map of interconnected websites or search terms.

TouchGraph also offers Amazon and Facebook browsers as well as providing the visualization technology to companies on a per job basis.