Web Shots

Yahoo joins Opensocial League

by Sujoy on March 12, 2008

Yahoo Opensocial

Remember the thing called Opensocial that Google came up with when rival Facebook’s fraction of a fraction was bought by Microsoft, making them worth 15 billion $. But that’s like ages ago. The current buzz is that Yahoo, which was about to be acquired by Microsoft, is now joining forces with the Opensocial Alliance. According to NY Times, Yahoo is considering to join the alliance which will enable it to create more tools and services which will work across many platforms. The Opensocial gang as of now consists of Google, Friendster, hi5,Ning, MySpace Orkut,Xing and many others. If Yahoo joins, that would make Facebook the odd one out. Clearly, if Facebook continues to go independent with their own API, and the rest of the entire Web 2.0 following Opensocial’s API, it would not be long for facebook to eithr face its doom. But then, World’s youngest billionaire – Mark Zuckenberg isn’t that dumb, yeah? If Yahoo for sure joins Opensocial, Facebook might get forced to switch to Opensocial API for its applications. Finally, we might get to see a uniform distribution of API for application developers. Yippee!!

Related Post:Yahoo Plans to Join OpenSocial Alliance?

Image Courtesy:Thomas Hawk

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Some really good Youtube Alternatives

by Sujoy on March 6, 2008

Video Sharing sites

Yeah we all do agree that YouTube rules. In terms of the user-base, no.of videos available, no.of videos being watched, geography, and most importantly the availability of almost anything when you search for it. It has become the video version of Wikipedia integrated with Google. But yeah, the downside is that the Video quality still sucks and the occasional downtime ( for non-US users like me) irritates me to the core. Well Stage6 is closed and so until YouTube launches its High resolution Video upload functionality, we might have to watch out for better alternatives to free Internet Video entertainment. Here are a few really GOOD ONEs. Enjoy. Not in any order whatsoever.

1.Blip.TV:- The link is http://blip.tv. The beauty here is the there is no limit to the video size for upload. It doesn’t support online video editing. One of my favorites are on Blip, and they are Goodnight Burbank. The show is also syndicated on other video sites as well, but unknowingly, I like watching it on Blip.

2.DailyMotion:-The link is http://www.dailymotion.com .Everything is similar to Youtube, only better video streaming. And uploading is a charm. [Continue Reading]

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Introducing Mixx Mail

by Sujoy on February 7, 2008

Now Mixx has been around for quite some time now. I have been an avid user of this social bookmarking/networking website and I quite loved the services that it provided. It’s user friendly interface and user-base made up for almost all of its shortcomings. But yes, the need for a Mixx Mail Service was felt. Not anymore. Introducing, Ladies and Gents! the Mixx Mail.

Mixx Mail

Now you can send a Mixx message or mail to your Mixx friends, as you do on other social bookmarking websites. I have quite a few friends on Mixx, and have always felt the need to communicate with a user before adding him/her up. Now, I can do that easily. The Mixx Mail service can be used by clicking on the little mail envelope icon that appears next to your User ID on your profile page. You can select whom to send the message, and even conveniently select all of your friends. There’s no CAPTCHA code here. Good Thing-Bad Thing, You decide! As far as I am concerned, I think Mixx is consistently working to improve its services and I’m loving it. More so because, it’s easier now to share stuff now on Mixx, now with a personal touch.  What’s more lovely is the way Mixx Mail looks when you send a message across many friends. It could actually turn out to be like a discussion thread with the latest post in the bottom. So forums, messages and discussions all covered at one single strike.Go Mixx!!

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Privacy is no more in MySpace

by Sujoy on January 27, 2008

MySpace can be actually termed as the living room of the internet. It is one of the most visited sites across the world, and is still the market leader when it comes to Social Networking. We all know about the irritating scattered layouts with the invisible fonts and the translucent templates. But what was charming about MySpace was, anyone who wasn’t a friend/acquaintance could be denied permissions of having a peek at our private files, ie-photographs. The privacy settings in MySpace were one of the first ones to appear in Social Networking sites, well until Facebook ruined the day. But the party got totaly spoilt with the emergence of many hacks available online, through which pics of even private profiles could be viewable. [Continue Reading]

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