Linden Lab’s Second Life has seen its fair share of controversies in the past; an FBI investigation led to a shut down of inworld casinos, some media reports suggested that Second Life may be being used as a training area for terrorists, and in July there was suggestion that Bestiality may be driven out of the metaverse by a crackdown under a new TOS that banned “Broadly Offensive” behaviour. UK authorities may soon be entering Second Life as part of a crack down on virtual pedophilia following the above report being shown on Sky News. The report investigates an area in Second Life called “Wonderland” where users dressed as children offer virtual prostitution in a space designed to mimic a kids playground. Someone recently said to me at a conference that Second Life’s greatest strength is also its greatest weakness: pure uncensored freedom; they are completely right. No self respecting person could argue that the staging of virtual pedophilia is anything but sick and should have no place within Second Life, and yet libertarian governance has been the key driver of the Second Life success story . The whole thing is yet another tarnish on a space where some really great things are happening, a space that is slowly finding a much wider acceptance in the broader community. The quicker Linden Lab cracks down on these sickos, the better for the many Second Life fans out there who preach the Second Life gospel where ever they go. CrunchBase Information Second Life Information provided by CrunchBase → Read More
What do you get when you cross iTunes with a web browser? You get Songbird, an application built on top of Mozilla Firefox’s core technology that serves as a platform for media websites that want to integrate tightly with a desktop media player. We last wrote about Songbird over a year and a half ago when version 0.1 was released. Tonight, Songbird releases version 0.3, which the company considers its equivalent to Firefox 1.0. Perhaps the best way to explain Songbird is to compare it what Apple has done with iTunes. While iTunes is a traditional desktop application that must be downloaded and installed, the iTunes Store within iTunes is actually a website that meshes so seamlessly (and exclusively) with iTunes that you don’t really realize that you are browsing a website when looking for music to buy. Click to purchase some music and the iTunes Store website communicates with the iTunes desktop client to trigger certain functionality, like a user prompt and then a file download. Apple is able to contain the entire shopping experience within its media player, making the consumption of new music very convenient. Now suppose you’re a media company that wants to set up shop within users’ media players the way Apple has set up shop within iTunes. You could try to hack together a plugin for iTunes, but you won’t get the same results and you’ll be subject to the whims of proprietary software. With Songbird, you have access not only to a fully-equipped desktop media player but also a set of open APIs with which you can easily mesh your existing website with Songbird (see developer center). For the most part, developers just need to program their websites to take advantage of a Songbird DOM object in JavaScript. You can also build themes and plugins for Songbird as you might for Firefox, since the application’s architecture is fundamentally the same. Songbird turned to Mozilla technology for its product because it wanted operating system agnosticism. Also, other possible web-to-desktop platforms, like AIR, were not created with an open source philosophy nor designed well enough for large-scale projects. Songbird envisions its platform being used not only for track download services, but for services based around any type of media such as video. The Hype Machine, Insound, and SkreemR have programmed their websites for Songbird and are packaged with the latest release. A screenshot of the → Read More
http://blip.tv/scripts/flash/showplayer.swf?enablejs=true&feedurl=http%3A%2F%2Fmahalodaily%2Eblip%2Etv%2Frss&file=http%3A%2F%2Fblip%2Etv%2Frss%2Fflash%2F459870&showplayerpath=http%3A%2F%2Fblip%2Etv%2Fscripts%2Fflash%2Fshowplayer%2Eswf The latest Jason Calacanis Mahalo spin-off launches November 5 with a daily video podcast based around well…the rather unexciting topic of Mahalo’s content pages.Mahalo Daily’s star, ex-C-Net producer Veronica Belmont seems to have a good presence on screen and the recording quality is good, even if the topic area going forward will be a challenge. Classic line from the video above: Jason Calacanis saying that Rocketboom isn’t funny, which probably wont make him a lot of friends at Rocketboom. The fart jokes about the dog at the end were rather juvenile, however the piss take of some other video shows was cleverly crafted. As former TechCrunch writer Marshall Kirkpatrick said on Twitter: “I’m not ashamed to say it, I think the trailer for mahalo daily is great”…well maybe I didn’t find it great, but surprisingly it’s pretty good. For those that don’t like the video, I grabbed the below image for you, as I’m sure that Jason would like you to speak to the hand CrunchBase Information Mahalo Information provided by CrunchBase → Read More
Trick or Treat, CrunchGear readers. If you’re short of costume ideas, I’d like to share with you this downloadable Christopher Walkin cut-out mask. You can pair it with any outfit, and if anyone gives you crap about it, you can kill them. Cuz that’s what Chris would do. Christopher Walken Halloween Mask Cut-out! [Witz] → Read More
A new company called Enurgi has taken its cue from social networks by creating a service network that connects caregivers with patients and facilitates their business transactions online. The site is premised on the notion that it is currently too difficult for the elderly and disabled to find professionals to care for them (or clinicians to find clients who can benefit from their particular skills). Since Enurgi serves as a tool for both patients and caregivers, it can be viewed from either of two ends. Professional caregivers can join the site by claiming their identity (with scanned proof of license) from a database of about 1.5 million caregivers, which Enurgi has built up from public records maintained by states across the US. Once registered, caregivers fill out their profiles with information about their specialties, work experiences, accreditations, locations, and contact methods. If they already have clients, they can record the times they are busy in an online calendar. Soon, caregivers will also be able to run background checks on themselves using LexisNexis and post the results of those checks on their profiles. Once ready, these caregivers can then find people in need of their services by searching Enurgi’s pool of registered care recipients. On the other end of things, those in need of care (or those who have responsibility for those in need of care, like family members) can register and set up their own profiles with information about their medical conditions, lifestyles, support systems, and needs for special care. They too can fill out an online schedule for themselves but will probably skip right ahead to searching for caregivers who live in their area, who are registered with the site, and who possess the right expertise. Caregivers and care recipients can establish relationships by sending each other messages through the website. Enurgi will then keep track of these relationships, help schedule sessions with its calendaring system, and manage all of the payments that clients send to their caregivers through the website (powered by PayPal). Clients can also post reviews of their caregivers that can be viewed by other potential clients. Among Enurgi’s features is a tool that helps care recipients calculate how much money they will have to spend on services given their insurance coverage. Another tool helps caregivers deal with the paperwork of working under contract. Enurgi will determine in time just how it wants to make money → Read More
Best Buy is now in the video hosting game, thanks to UK-based Mydeo. Mydeo is basically a service that allows you to upload your videos to it and then share them with friends, loved-ones, and hangers-on. → Read More
It’s not HD, it’s not high-end, but for $169 the Torpedo Entertainment Projector might get the kids out of the living room for a while so you can watch Grey’s Anatomy. The projector connects to almost any device and projects an image six feet high on a blank wall. It has a 940×240 resolution and includes a headphone jack so junior’s game of Sexy Poker won’t interrupt Shabbat dinner. It’s available now at Wal-Mart and Target and we’ll give it a whirl to see if its a worthy addition to your special guy room. Product Page → Read More
Another long tail. HA! Bloggers with little or no access to PR folks — here’s your chance. Chris Anderson, EIC of Wired, is pissed off at a bunch of marketing folks who keep bombarding him with emails that have little if anything to do with his day-to-day job as “guy who thinks up overwrought memes.” As payback, he trapped a bunch of releases and banned their senders and posted their email addresses on his blog. How can you use this to your advantage? Mass email these folks and tell them about your blog. You’ll either get silence or they’ll stick you on their PR list just to be done with you. One man’s trash is another man’s comfortably full inbox. Sorry PR people: you’re blocked [TheLongTail] → Read More
Attention: Mariah Carey. I know you read this blog, I’ve been tracking you via IP address for years. I’m not sure why you like Nicholas’s stuff more than mine, you tramp, but whatever, it’s your problem. At any rate, I ran across this diamond encrusted iPhone and immediately thought of you. I mean, you’re very similar, aren’t you? You’re celebrated for your features, but really don’t do anything lots of others don’t, and now, with the diamonds around the edge, you’re more about blinging than singing. I know the last album didn’t do so hot, honey, but you should still be able to pull out $40k for this iPhone. I mean, you want yours to be better than Paris’s Sidekick, don’t you? And I mean her phone, not that skanky Ritchie character. diamond encrusted iphone sparkles [technabob] → Read More
While every online video site wrestles with trying to make social video pay, a small UK-based startup has stuck to its belief that not everyone wants to share the videos of their family and kids with the whole world. Thus, Mydeo has been rewarded today with an undisclosed minority equity investment by retailer Best Buy, which will use Mydeo’s platform for its bespoke video sharing service, reports TechCrunchUK. Best Buy Video Sharing is a subscription-based service for users to upload their personal videos for storage, but also allows them to share select videos on web sites and blogs, while controlling who views the video. Word on the street is that Best Buy – which already had photo-sharing through Kodak – didn’t want a combined photo/video service and, incredibly enough, couldn’t find a US-based company that could do what they wanted. However, I have a hunch that since Mydeo is built on Microsoft’s Movie Maker software there may have been some useful introductions made at Microsoft level. Best Buy, the largest electronics retailer in the US, sells around a third of all video cameras sold each year. Significantly, a large percentage of those are sold to Mydeo’s target audiences of families and small businesses, who tend to use Movie Maker. Hey, it may not be cool, but it’s a fact. Whatever the details of the deal, it’s a good one for Mydeo’s co-founders Cary Marsh and Iain Millar, who started out in 2005 from a small South West London office with local municipal grants. CrunchBase Information Mydeo Information provided by CrunchBase → Read More
This has nothing to do with DeCSS, but it takes me back I for one love the rat race between copy protection creators and copy protection breakers. Newly released Blu-ray and HD DVD discs have been shipping with the fourth-gen MKB copy protection. Slysoft’s AnyDVD software already works around this new copy protection scheme. As the world turns… Various message boarders were freaking out that the newly released Transformers HD DVD couldn’t be ripped because of the new copy protection. And then it was ripped and ripped again by release group after release group. At this point, you can hardly visit CNN without bumping into a torrent for the rip. Calling copy protection schemes “unbreakable” is as silly as calling the Titanic “unsinkable.” AnyDVD Bypasses Latest AACS Protection [CDRinfo] → Read More
Remember how on G.I. Joe, or M.A.S.K. or pretty much every rad cartoon how they had giant wall sized screens they’d use to make videocalls to each other? And how, even though they couldn’t find him, they always seemed to be able to dial-in Cobra Commander? They were using Skype. → Read More
What we’ve called Y Combinator’s European clone, Y Europe, has let loose with their first startup, Soup.io. Soup.io is very low friction take on life streaming that serves as an aggregator for a lot of your public social media feeds. There are a lot of startups trying to do social aggregation (Spokeo, ProfileLinker, MyLifeBrand, Fuser). Paul Buchheit’s highly automated FriendFeed looks like one of the best so far, but Soup.io is another easy to use alternative despite being manual. Without needing to sign up, you can easily combine feeds from services like: Flickr, Digg, LiveJournal, Delicious, eBay, StumbleUpon, Twitter, Vox, YouTube, Zoomr, or any other RSS feed. Soup.io also has a bookmarklet that lets users easily add content to their feed from around the web, turning it into kind of a tumble blog. All the feeds are displayed in dated order on a customizable profile page. Signing up means you can connect with friends, follow their feeds, and link your feed to your own domain name. Each of these “life streaming” services is applying the news feed paradigm to the web, but not wrapped in the same sense of place and purpose as Facebook’s social network. Most life streaming services are just really simple RSS readers or replace a bunch of social networks with another somewhat clunky meta one. However, as social sites open up their information, services like Soup will benefit and the real question will change from how to aggregate your content, to what really interesting services you can run on top of them. CrunchBase Information Soup.io FriendFeed Information provided by CrunchBase → Read More
Currently, Circuit City is listing LG’s much-anticipated BH200 combination Blu-ray / HD DVD / DVD player for $799.99. That’s an expensive player with a price reminiscent of the first HD DVD and Blu-ray players to hit the market. Sure, it can do 1080p, DVD upscaling and play both formats, but with Toshiba’s A2 HD DVD player going for $198 at Wal-Mart and the PS3 going for $399 or less, the price just doesn’t match the BH200′s value. Sure HDMI 1.3 is nice, but your PS3 does that just fine and it plays games from three generations of consoles to boot. The worst part about all this is that Circuit City is selling the LG BH200 greatly discounted compared to other online retailers; though it does appear that one site is selling it for a paltry $699. My advice? Pick a format and deal. If you simply can’t, save some cash and just buy two different players. Circuit City Product Page → Read More
UK video startup Mydeo has created a bespoke video sharing service for the giant US retailer Best Buy. Best Buy Video Sharing is a subscription-based service for users to upload their personal videos for storing, sharing on web sites and blogs. The service will be merchandised online and in Best Buy’s retail stores. Best Buy will also take a minority, equity stake in Mydeo, though the amount has not been disclosed. Unlike many other video sharing services, the service will allow the user to choose who can view their home videos, and, being subscription-based, won’t display ads. Base plans start at $6.97 for 100 minutes of video hosting and video lengths up to 30 minutes each. Customers can chose premium plans for extended video lengths, additional video storage capacity, and other sharing features. Cary Marsh, CEO and Founder of Mydeo says the service will allow users to “show their high quality videos to friends and family, without exposing their personal movies on public sites, without advertising, or giving away any distribution rights.” Mydeo originally started in 2005 from a small South West London office with local government grants, but it has since won private investment and become Microsoft’s first European ‘Movie Maker’ hosting partner. → Read More
This is an interesting device and, as fate may have it, a device I’ve been waiting on for quite some time now. It’s basically a Bluetooth speakerphone that clips to your visor and outputs sound to your car’s stereo. You can use it for calls but, even better, you can use it for audio. So if your phone or MP3 player does Bluetooth, you can stream your tunes directly to your car stereo without any wires. → Read More
D-Link announced today that it has begun shipping the next increment of its Xtreme N Gaming Router. The DGL-4500 comes complete with GameFuel technology which is essentially a QoS system that is optimized for game traffic. The device uses the latest Draft 802.11n standard and promises wireless transfer speeds up to 300Mbps. It also supports Gigagabit ethernet, for those of you who can deal with wires. D-Link also claims that the device is further optimized with a high-performance CPU that could, conceivably speed things up somewhat. → Read More
How appropriate that Rockstar will be launching Manhunt 2 tomorrow during Halloween. The game has been under fire for months due to its extremely violent content. It was even banned in the UK and received an “Adults Only” rating from the ESRB originally, meaning Rockstar had to take some time to modify the title so it would receive a “Mature” rating instead. Says producer Sam Houser: “Manhunt 2 has gone through much to reach this day,” said Sam Houser, founder and executive producer of Rockstar Games, in a statement. “We are very excited that fans will finally get a chance to experience the magnificent horror experience we’ve crafted with Manhunt 2.” Look for the ultra-violent title, which requires you to escape from an insane asylum full of crazies, tomorrow on the PSP, PS2 and Wii. Manhunt 2 Launches in North America [Digital Trends] → Read More
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