Myspace

Mash, Yahoo's way of quietly saying farewell to Yahoo 360, is at first glance a somewhat uninspired attempt to catch up with Facebook. Even the name is boring--Mash. Don't mix it up, by the way, with Mosh, Nokia's mobile networking site (currently in beta) and Mashable, the social-networking blog. Mash (invite-only as of now) looks like a cross between Facebook, MySpace and Netvibes--and it also has a bit of wiki DNA: Anyone you grant permissions to can edit your profile or add modules they think are relevant to your profile. Besides that, nothing new.

To be … Read more

Up until this afternoon I had never heard of the expression "hypervideo," although I was quite familiar with the concept having used it in video services like Viddler, and enhanced podcasts in Windows Media Player. The idea is simple--take hyperlinks and textual information, and add it to various times or positions on a video. The result is that your viewers can have added contextual information about whatever they're watching, at the moment it happens.

The hard part is the execution, and making things user-friendly. A service called Asterpix has taken a stab at it with a hypervideo … Read more

Do we really need another social networking site? Apparently so, and we're not talking about start-ups here.

What we're hearing--and this is industry cocktail-party gossip, albeit a very believable variety thereof--is that MTV Networks is working on its own social network and we'll be hearing more about it pretty soon. We don't have a name, or a target demographic (Teens? College kids? Young adults?) or any semblance of screenshots. This is so hush-hush, in fact, that we aren't even sure whether it's an MTV Networks (as in MTV, VH1, MTV2, Spike TV and the … Read more

If you want instant messaging without an extra app, there's always Meebo. For those missing out on the desktop experience, however, there's a new solution called AirTalkr that does multiclient IM sans a full installation using Adobe's Integrated Runtime (AIR). The service works with five of the major clients, along with several Web services including YouTube, Flickr, along with Twitter and MySpace. In addition to its AIR namesake, there's also a Web version that has identical functionality sans the install, if you're willing to relegate yourself to the Windows Vista-style virtual desktop it creates in your browser.

The app breaks up IM, photos and videos into three different tabs. The IM is multitabbed and supports something called AirCards, which pull up your buddy's MySpace and Friendster profile, along with Flickr shots, Twitter updates, blog, and profile on LinkedIn from their e-mail address. If it can't find it, there are links to ask your buddy (which will start a conversation) or add it yourself using another e-mail address or a URL.

The photos tab links up with Flickr, and if you're a Flickr user you can authorize your the app to browse your photos, which can be opened up and viewed on your desktop. The Video feature is a little more basic, with four pages full of popular and featured videos from YouTube that play in a small window, along with a search tool. The video player is small and cannot be resized, which is where the illusion of a real app begins to break down.

All in all, Air Talkr is off to a good start, although it's in a very competitive field. Competitors like Meebo have things like buddy list pop-out, file transfer, and public rooms. AIR is also a bit young, and still very much in beta. Keep an eye on this one, though, the AirCard concept is a second layer of convergence on top of multiclients that might make this one stand out.

To see a video of Air Talkr in action, click the read more link below. On a related note, if you're a developer working on a hands-on video with your service, Kelly Clarkson is not the way to go.

[via Mashable] … Read more

We reported back in July that MySpace in the midst of a deal with the creators of the movie Blood Diamond to create a new Web-based program called Quarterlife. At the time, it wasn't confirmed, representatives from the parties involved declined to comment, and quarterlife.com was password-protected.

Now, it's official: a release from MySpace has confirmed that Quarterlife will debut on its MySpaceTV platform on November 11. A project of Marshall Herskovitz and Edward Zwick, who created the TV shows My So-Called Life and Thirtysomething in addition to Blood Diamond, the new Web show will follow the … Read more

It looks like the little 7-year-old girl in this video can kick some serious booty on Guitar Hero. She may not be the only tyke around who can rock the music game (see this 5 year old and this 8 year old go at it), but still, it's damn cute watching her work that heavy metal with such speed and intense determination.

This video recently bubbled up on MySpace, where it has, of course generated hundreds of comments that alternately slam the girl for missing notes or spending time playing video games in the first place and praise her … Read more

Soon you can brag about your travels to your fellow MySpace friends as well as your height, weight and looks.

Where I've Been aka WIB, an application for sharing a map on places you've visited, lived in or want to visit, will now be available for MySpace users, the company plans to announce Friday.

The mapping application allows users to color-code the world by where they have visited or lived and where they would like to go. The U.S. is broken out by states while the rest of the world is broken out by country.

The Chicago-based … Read more

In a move that further shapes its image as an MTV-like pop-culture hub as well as a social network, News Corp.'s MySpace.com has announced that it will be sponsoring a concert tour this fall.

Appropriately called the MySpace Music Tour, the series of shows will kick off October 16 in Seattle and will host more than 30 performances before winding down in Las Vegas around Thanksgiving.

The headlining acts for the tour will be two artists who have built up large followings on the social-networking site--geeky pop band Hellogoodbye and emo act Say Anything.

The tour will also … Read more

Embeddable widget powerhouse Slide gained buzz as a way to display photo slide shows on MySpace, but then saw meteoric growth as part of the Facebook Platform initiative. Now, the company has announced that 1 million of its Flash-based widgets are added to the network's servers every day for non-Facebook social media platforms. Slide's Facebook widgets, which rank No. 1, No. 2, and No. 6 on the list of most popular embeddable applications on the white-hot social network, are not Flash-based and consequently were not included in the tally.

Note that this refers to widgets created, not "… Read more