July 29, 2007

Grandparents.com Connecting Generations

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Grandparents.com is a new site for the “modern-day” grandparent. The service has not yet launched, but is scheduled to go live later this fall.

The site will aim to be a meeting ground for grandparents and their grandchildren, and will feature information about activities to do with the youngsters, some travel and gift ideas, and connect with grandchildren with the site’s interactive tools. Looks like there will be some editorial content layered throughout the site as well, in the form of articles by other grandparents and recognized experts, covering topics like recipes and situational problem solving.

Not sure how well both grandparents and grandchildren will respond to an online social network for the purpose of keeping in touch, but it may work for those looking for an easy way to stay connected. There’s obviously a challenge in connecting a huge age gap for online communities, and addressing the needs of the younger generation while also making a system simple enough for everyone else to use is quite a feat. Bunchball is also looking to provide games that will encourage grandparents and grandchildren to interact online, and BOOMj has also recently launched as a network for baby boomers.

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BarBook Facebook App Lets You Find Venues Friends

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The BarBook facebook application lets you find local venues and meet others that go to the same places as you.

Based on your location (which can be changed), BarBook will show places in your area and those that have added the particular venue to their list. You can add venues to your list too, and you’ll become a regular. Places that you’ve added will be displayed on your BarBook profile within Facebook, as well as your Facebook profile wall. Each venue has a profile as well, where you can read and submit comments, and edit information about the venue (for example, upload an image). This allows you to meet others on Facebook, and find recommended places to go.

While there is a leaderboard for the most active BarBook members, there’s no way to really rank the venues; you’ll just have to know that the place with the most “regulars” must be the place to go. Looks like BarBook has started its venture in California and is relying on users to slowly build out from there. The team tells us they’ll be incorporating information directly from Facebook event listings in the future, which will probably be a good tie in for additional content and sharing options within the social network.

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DailyMotion Signs Deal with RDF USA Production Company

DailyMotion has landed a licensing deal with RDF USA, a production company.

This is among the first licensing deal for DailyMotion, and really helps to launch it into another realm, as RDF syndicates content to several large broadcast and cable channels, including “Shaq’s Big Challenge” on ABC. About eight programs will be provided by RDF for DailyMotion, and the companies are reportedly considering comedy, drama and political genres. The deal could also help promote and solidify DailyMotion’s presence in the US, as its US version was launched earlier this month.

Hopefully DailyMotion will continue to gain more partnerships with traditional media companies and other content providers, to avoid lawsuits such as the one the video-sharing site just lost to a French film producer, as well as to keep the advertisers happy.

[via]

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Q&A TOOLBOX: 30+ Tools For Questions and Advice

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All of us can use help sometimes, and people on the Internet has the answers you need. Turn to these 30+ sites when you’re stumped.

Advice

    Youme.us

WhatShouldISay.com - Unsure of what to say in a given situation? Ask advice.

Youme.us - Relationship advice, can even be accessed on the fly on your phone.

Business

    Work.com

PaperCalculator.org - Calculates the environmental impact of different types of paper on the eco-system for companies attempting to lower their impact.

Work.com - Directed to assisting the small business with answers they need.

Education

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AnswerU.com - Ask questions about universities and schooling.

Ask A Librarian - Reference service from the Library of Congress where you ask a question and get an answer from a librarian.

Cramster.com - Ask specific questions all the way down to your textbook.

Education.com - Columns and features with the ability to ask more questions.

General

    Yahoo Answers

Able2Know.com - A well known site for experts answering questions for free.

AllExperts.com - Volunteers answer your questions on any number of subjects.

Answerbag.com - Categorized as to Social, Experts, Local, and shopping.

Answers.Yahoo.com - Probably the largest of the question and answer sites.

Answerlytics.com - Ask and answer questions, edit ones that are already posted.

AskMeHelpDesk.com - Provides answers in over 300 categories, allows question askers to tip the answerer.

Dizzay.com - Features different ways to get answers, including live chats for instant answers.

Fluther.com - Guides your question to the correct people and then opens the question & answer to discussion.

Guruza.com - Allows for one-on-one chatting with experts in the ara you need help.

KnowBrainers.com - Short, concise questions and get answers.

Neighbor.com - Local answers to your questions, currently San Francisco based.

NowNow.com - Ask a question, receive three responses via email.

Qna.Live.com - Microsoft’s entrant into the world of online answer sites.

SimplyExplained.com - Ask your frustrating questions and have them answered by experts.

TheAnswerBank.co.uk - Ask questions, get answers in any number of subjects, based in the UK.

TheOpinionAggregator.com - Out in a question and this site will search the web for answers and opinions related to it.

Tipstrs.com - Answers on many different subjects.

Wis.dm - Encourages discussion an debate of answers.

Wondir.com - Ask questions, browse current answers.

Yedda.com - Explore questions that have already been asked, ask your own.

Technical

    Fixya.com

Annoyances.org - Answers for just about any question you can come up with for every version of Windows.

Fixya.com - A place to find help with consumer electronics.

Qunu.com - Live technical help with web application problems .

Retrevo.com - Troubleshooting for consumer electronics.

Zolved.com - Ask technical questions on just about any gadget or computer, find users manuals.

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RockYou Launches Super Wall API, Facebook Ad Network

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UPDATE: Note the addition of information about 3rd parties on the RockYou ad network - they are indeed selling ads for other developers.

Slideshow tool RockYou, previously depend on MySpace for much of its traffic, is attempting to solidify its position as one of the top Facebook apps providers by helping out those with less popular apps. They’ve just unveiled two new tricks: an API for one of their most popular apps, and the ability to buy ads on RockYou’s applications.

Super Wall API

This is very meta: an API for a Facebook application. RockYou is releasing an API for Super Wall, its popular Facebook app that puts videos, audio, pictures and Flash embeds on the Facebook wall. (Facebook may have just rendered the product useless, however - while RockYou replaces your wall with an entirely new one and makes you remove the original in your settings, Facebook just added the ability for developers to put rich media on the original wall itself. File host Divshare has already taken advantage of this.).

Either way, Super Wall is thriving, with 2.5M active users and 100,000 new users per day. That might be to due to the fact that it aggressively tries to invite your friends to use your wall, making it hard to opt out. RockYou described the specifics of the API in an email:

1. Developer adds a “Share with Friends” button (image attached) to their app - this can be placed on the user profile box, the application canvas page, and even outside Facebook
2. The “Share with Friends” button is linked to a RockYou URL with parameters specifying the attached media content, title, description, and url (developers will want this to point back to their application)
3. When users click the “Share with Friends” button they are taken to a “Post to Super Wall” page where they can choose multiple friends to send the post to. They can also leave a personal comment for the post. One important note: users are not required to have either Super Wall or the 3rd party app installed to post content to their friend’s Super Walls.
4. Content is posted to Super Wall with link back to 3rd party application.

You can see a horoscope app with the Share with Friends button in the screenshot below. There’s currently no web page for the API: contact the developers AT rockyou email address for more info.

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Ad Network

Probably even bigger news than an API-within-a-platform: RockYou wants to take on Lookery and fbexchange. RockYou has one thing those companies lack (until they sign up enough app owners, of course) - RockYou apps are already hugely popular on Facebook. Since RockYou can’t monetize its MySpace widgets at all, save for the traffic driven back to RockYou.com, they desperately need to convert this presence to cash.

As a result, they’re now allowing the owners of smaller Facebook apps to advertise on RockYou’s applications: add the aforementioned Super Wall to your Facebook profile, and you may see an offer to install the My Greeting Card app. The ads are sold at the equivalent of a $20 CPM, a massively high rate in the social media space.

Meanwhile, RockYou is also selling ads for 3rd parties, giving developers a 70% share of the ad revenue when ads are bought on their apps. Oodle, MyLot/Interests+, Trendhunter and others have already signed up, they say. Initially, they’ll be focused on Pay Per Install (PPI) - getting paid by advertisers when a user installs that app. They have 200K worth of ad inventory to push out: 60K has already been fulfilled, they say, and they just completed a fulfillment of 15K in 8 hours. Not bad going at all.

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Samsung Goes 3D

Looks like there is yet another reason to buy a new large screen TV: Samsung announced last week that they are ready to ship a new line of DLP High Def sets that are, with the help of a PC and some Samsung Software and some special glasses, ready to convert your ho-hum 2D viewing experience to an extra dimension. 3D content in HD sounds like a good fit for sporting events or perhaps even console games. Click here to read more and watch a Video on the new Samsung 3d TV.

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Google Earth Enterprise Version Update Released



Google Earth
has released the latest version of Google Earth Enterprise, incorporating some new geospatial tools, among other things.

Some of the new features include browser integration with the Google Maps API AJAX, allowing maps to be embedded in web-based applications. There’s also a new serch framework for integrating geocoding and other search services, including Java plug-ins. Use the regionator to make Super-Overlays with Regions, and publish them with other Google Earth products. Security and support has been stepped up as well. Overall, a good portion of the upgrades involve some better integration options with other Google Earth services and web-based services.

In other Google Maps news, Google has acquired Image America, and its project with NASA has been completed.

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RSS Mixer could be Twitter without the Social Network

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RSS Mixer is a new service that will combine all of your feeds into one. A feed aggregator, if you will.

Take your favorite feeds and combine them into one. RSS Mixer will provide you a URL with your master feed, along with downloadable widget options and formats, including one for your iPhone, one for your personal website or blog, a regular RSS feed, and an Apple dashboard widget. There are a couple badge options as well, if you’d like others to grab your feed. The main feed page shows a list of these options for others, as well as a running list of the feeds included.

This service sort of boils down to Jaiku or Twitter without the social network, if you’ve ever used one of these micro-blogging tools to show your blog updates automatically. The service is very simple to use, and could be a great fit for a service like Profile Builder, and profile aggregating services such as Tabber.

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Online Swaps: 8 Sites to Swap Your Stuff

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Online trading site Swaptree entered public beta this month after over a year in testing - it lets you swap books, music, DVDs and video games. In fact, online trading is a growing trend, with some new sites adding social networking to the mix. Today we look at 8 of the most interesting sites where you can trade the stuff you’ve got for the stuff you want.

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Peerflix - Potentially the most popular of the lot, Peerflix is a DVD trading service which is open to Canadian and US users. The idea behind the service is simple; a one-stop solution for all your DVD needs without burning a hole in your pocket. The first step is to sign up for your free account and then proceed further by listing “the titles you can provide” and “the titles you want”. Once part of the community, you can mail movies directly to your trading partner and in turn get Peerbux: credit tokens that can be exchanged for items on the site. Peerflix also deducts 99 cents from your account each time you receive a movie and gives guarantees against loss, theft, or damage in transit.

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Lala - Lala is to music what Peerflix is to movies. Lala has been able to successfully build a comprehensive database of users and also offers a wide variety of Internet radio station streams including the iconic WOXY Station, which was seen as a haven for indie lovers. The process is simple; list the desired CDs on your account and Lala simply shoots you an email when a CD on your “Have List” matches with a disc on another member’s “Want List.” Lala charges $1.75 for each transaction including shipping.

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Goozex - If you live and breathe gaming, then Goozex may just work for you. The peer-to-peer service solely deals in games and is generating quite a buzz in the gaming community. Recently they added a special Mac section, which not only offers Mac games (yes, they exist) but also has a neat Dashboard widget. Via the widget, Mac users can keep track of their requests for games and library lists. On signing up, users can trade their games and in turn receive points to get other games for $1 per trade.

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SwitchPlanet - Going Green is the mantra of 2007 and Switch Planet plans to adhere to it. The site is still in beta and believes in the motto of “use more… waste less”. Lofty ambitions? Maybe, but for now it does look promising. It is based on the same principle as the above-mentioned services which means; sign up, list your items, make a preferences list and start swapping. SwitchPlanet is 100% free but you can buy additional points, which lets you skip the waiting period.

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Neighborrow - We all can do without those pesky neighbors who end up at the door, always looking to borrow something. However Neighborrow seeks to make borrowing and lending more pleasurable and one can borrow/trade books, movies, music, tools, household items, baby items and so on. The site is still in Alpha and it looks like it’s going to be while before it really kick-starts. For now you may want to skip this one but do keep it on your future watch list.

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Zunafish - Zunafish stands apart from the crowd as it forsakes the community principle and lets one indulge in some good old one-on-one trading. The Barter System of the 21st century lets you trade music, movies, paperbacks, videotapes and audiobooks. Many feel that the service’s Achilles heel is its non-automated system and high-shipping rates.

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Title Trader - Call this the wildcard entry. Title Trader’s strength lies in the fact that it is not just restricted to a single product and one can swap books, DVDs, VHS, CDs and video games. The website has a very simple interface which we are not too enthused about and operates in a similar manner to Lala and Peerflix. Title Trader is open to anyone on the planet and is free. However, to access Premium features there is a yearly fee of $19.95.

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PlayInterChange - Another peer-to-peer service, which caught our attention and is showing promising signs. The service has a wide range of products and has categories like DVDs, CDs, HD,Blu-Ray and Mac software. The site is beta right now, and PlayInterChange charges $.50 for brokering the transaction. One unique feature is that users get to decide their own prices for each listed item. They claim to have a comprehensive collection, which includes around 3,000 video games and 90,000 movies.

What did we miss? Leave your suggestions in the comments.

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TrustedOpinion Funded & Integrating Netflix Direct Recommendations

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TrustedOpinion, the free online community that lets you create a personal recommendation circle of friends, has integrated Netflix queuing into its system.

You can now get Netflix queuing directly from DVD review pages within the Netflix recommendation network. This essentially combines the TrustedIOpinion system with your existing Netflix account. Access the top rated movie and DVD releases based on your circle of friends, figure out which movie you’d like to see next, and add it to your Netflix queue. You can also purchase the movie directly from Amazon as well. This process is similar to the type of personal feed and recommendation options as outlined by the recently launched Engagd, enabling your information to be applied in this manner with other sites.

TrustedOpinion, still in beta, has recently received funding from a Series A round, for an undisclosed amount. The company is currently focused on presonal recommendations for movies and television shows, and has plans to branch out further into other categories. A similar system that has recently been released is Matchmine, which builds a personal recommendation list based on your preferences.

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