On Twitter there are easy ways to share links, photos, and videos (via bit.ly, Twitpic, YFrog, Flickr, and YouTube), and now there is an easy way to record and share screencasts. The service is called Screenjelly, and it just launched today. It comes from the the team that created ScreenToaster, which was bought by enterprise video provider Veodia last month.
Screenjelly is a browser-based screen sharing app. After allowing a Java applet to run on your computer, you press record and have 3 minutes to show anything on your computer screen, using your built-in microphone to do a voiceover. Once you are done, you can Tweet out a link to your video. Unlike other Web-based screen sharing apps like Webex or Adobe Acrobat, Screenjelly is asynchronous and designed for quick, fast sharing sessions. Even ScreenToaster has a lot more bells and whistles. → Read More
Just to follow up on a story from last month, St. Louis Cardinals manager Tony La Russa has now officially dropped his lawsuit against Twitter. La Russa had been suing the service for someone who was pretending to be him and was seeking ““unspecified damages.” He got none of those, nor will he get anything else from the startup.
No money changed hands in the dropping of the suit. Here’s the goods from the court document:
Pursuant to Rule 41(a)(1)(A) of the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure, Plaintiff Anthony La Russa hereby dismisses with prejudice all claims in this action against Twitter, Inc., with each party to bear its own costs and attorneys’ fees. No payment was made by Twitter to La Russa in exchange for this dismissal.
While sitting in my dentist’s chair recently, I marveled at just how scary looking many of the implements on his tray were. And don’t get me started on that contraption I put my face into at the optometrists! It’s hard to believe that these implements of modern medicine will some day appear as quaint — and arguably as effective — as instruments of yore, like the “artificial leech” pictured here. → Read More
Put on your “WTF?!” hats, friends, as we watch this preview of Don’t Copy That Floppy 2. As you might imagine, it’s an anti-piracy video that’s supposed to teach people that Copyright Infringement is very, very wrong. It is a load of liquidy garbage. → Read More
So this seems like a good enough idea. It’s called MySecretCircle and it’s basically it’s a closed social network for girls. You and your buds buy a USB key that acts as your login. It autoruns under Windows and OS X and brings up a photo and journal sharing system that only allows certain people access to your daughter’s personal info. In theory and in practice this is great. It ensures your tween doesn’t connect with creeps like me. Kids can only connect with friends that have their private key – no one else exists in the site except for Sabrina Circle, the Tom of this candy-pink MySpace. → Read More
In news that should come as a surprise to absolutely no one, Michael Jackson’s sobering memorial service this morning will go down as one of the most watched web events, ever. As we reported earlier, the social web was well prepared for today’s ceremony, with sites including MySpace, Ustream (in partnership with CBS), Facebook (in partnership with CNN), and Hulu offering live streams, most of which also allowed viewers some way to interact with each other.
It’s still a little too early to determine just how widely watched the ceremony was, especially since traffic was distributed across many sites, but we’re already beginning to see some staggering preliminary numbers.
In the time window from 12AM to 4PM EST, Web analytics company Omniture reports that CNN saw:
CDN server logs also indicate that CNN saw a peak of 781,000 concurrent live streams at its peak. → Read More
Twitter! Everyone wants a piece of it. Tomorrow, we’ve heard, blog search engine and ad network Technorati will unveil a new site called Twittorati: “where the blogosphere meets the Twittersphere.”
The site, which we haven’t seen yet, will show what top bloggers are tweeting about, and compare topics to blogosphere trends. The site will also, according to a press release we’ve seen, allow visitors to filter tweets by topic, see the most tweeted blog posts, and compare leading blogosphere and Twitter trends. It sounds like it may be somewhat similar to Federated Media’s Exec Tweets.
Technorati Top 100 bloggers will be featured at launch, and it will expand to include more authors over time. The site was produced in partnership with Sawhorse Media, publisher of Muckrack.com and VentureMaven. Infinity is sponsoring Twittorati.
More details when we actually see the site. → Read More
Writing letters to elected officials and government organizations is a time-old part of political activism. More recently, citizens had the option of using email vs. snail mail to send out correspondence. Now, citizens will have the opportunity to send letters and messages to elected officials directly from Facebook. Bi-partisan Political and digital strategy firm Grassroots Enterprise has launched an technology, called “Actions,” that organizations can use on Facebook to allow supporters and visitors to send messages and letters to elected officials or other targets directly from Facebook.
The Actions tab on an organization’s Facebook page will let visitors immediately send letters to Federal or state officials and will automatically match them to federal and state legislative officials, based on the addresses they enter. One of the other important functions of Actions is its ability to capture names and emails in an external database for later emails and fundraising. Grassroots Enterprise says the beauty of the Actions offering is the ability to for users to interact with the technology without having to download a separate application. And the “Actions” page is customizable for individual pages, enabling organizations to feature their own actions for their specific causes. → Read More
E-book readers tend to be the sizes hardcover books – or a lot larger. That might be all well and good if you’re laying in bed, but the Bookeen Opus is about the size of a paperback, which makes it truely portable. The folks folks over at MobileRead got their hands on the small, but impressive, Opus for a sneak peak. → Read More
Right out of the gate, I feel obligated to tell you that the two flash memory camcorders written about in this post will cost $1100 and $1300 when they’re available in September. That being said, they’ll handle full 1080p HD video and feature 32GB or 64GB of internal memory depending on the model. → Read More
From time to time, we like to give away DVD/Blu-ray box sets for various Comedy Central shows and today happens to be one of those days. Season six of the ROFLtastic Reno 911! goes on sale today and we have three copies of the entire uncensored season on DVD to give away. Do you want one? Yeah you do. Leave your favorite quote in comments from the show and we’ll pick the winners tomorrow (Wednesday) at noon ET. → Read More
http://vimeo.com/moogaloop.swf?clip_id=5393865&server=vimeo.com&show_title=1&show_byline=1&show_portrait=0&color=&fullscreen=1 Hm – perhaps those iPhone 3GS mounts aren’t as silly as we thought (Not really- they’re still silly.) When videographer Kenny Mosher was tasked with shooting a music video for acoustic-folk band BJSR, he decided to skip the usual rig for something a bit more relevant in the moment: the iPhone 3GS. Now, this music video isn’t the first of its kind; rapper GOSHone recorded one on a jailbroken iPhone 3G, months before Apple ever condoned video recording on any of their mobile handsets. That said, it’s the first we know of shot through an Apple-endorsed method, and it’s a pretty nifty video at that. Could it be that the iPhone 3GS bit is just a gimmick for the sake of blog posts like this? Absolutely – but at least the song is catchy! → Read More
True story: I didn’t even know my Social Security Number until my freshman year of college, when it was used as my dorm building’s PIN. Type in the PIN, and the little gate would open. It seemed a little odd at the time, yes, and today’s news that, with a little elbow grease, someone can guess a person’s Social Security Number quite easily, well, that doesn’t exactly fill me with confidence vis-à-vis “the system.” → Read More
If you liked the smell of what Acer was cooking with the 11.6-inch Aspire One 751 netbook that was recently released but the relatively anemic 1.33GHz Atom CPU left a bad taste in your mouth, then prepare to cleanse your palate with the digital equivalent of crackers and unflavored water because Acer’s apparently prepping an 11.6-inch Timeline-series computer with an Intel ultra low voltage CPU. → Read More
Ryan wanted to add a flash to his iPhone so he cut open a Mophie JuicePack and connected a bright white LED and tiny switch. Boom: instant flash. → Read More
If you find yourself wishing your Palm Pre had a tad more battery life, Seidio is now selling an extended life battery for $45. It’s the same size as the regular battery pack so it doesn’t require a special back cover for you to use it. → Read More
Well, this sucks. I had not yet gotten around to downloading the new Delicious Library iPhone app, which I heard was great. And now I can’t because the developer had to remove it from the App Store. Why? Because of Amazon.
A recent change to Amazon’s Product Advertising API means that apps like Delicious Library are being restricted from using it, according to Alan Quatermain. And what’s really perplexing is that this change apparently only matters on mobile devices, meaning bye bye to an iPhone app that took its developers 8 months to build. → Read More
Skipping the boring formalities of the product announcement process — you know, like a press release — and just gettin’ right into the nitty gritty of things, T-Mobile USA has confirmed by way of Twitter that the Touch Pro2 is on the way to their shelves. The nice folks they are, they went ahead and gave us a launch window! “Summer,” they say. If narrowing things down to a 3 month window is nice, whoever leaked these specific launch dates is a saint. → Read More
I am not really sure who’d need a secondary display of this size, but Japanese gadget maker Greenhouse is offering a 7-inch screen [JP] that can be connected to your Mac or Windows PC via USB 2.0. The display features a decent 800 x 480 resolution (WVGA), 500:1 contrast ratio and 25ms response time. → Read More
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