KillerApp Sightings

The Internet video service Joost has attracted plenty of attention and subscribers in the short time it's been out. It's a promising application but, as we and many others have pointed out, it still needs some work. (That's why it's still in beta.) One of the drawbacks of a peer-to-peer application is that users need to download and re-install every new version or they can't use it -- and with frequent improvements being made to the software, Joost users have been doing a lot of downloading and re-installing. Flash developer Paul Yanez wondered if it would be possible to create a browser-based version of Joost that wouldn't have to be re-installed, and came up with the mashup demoed here, which duplicates the elegant Joost interface -- and incidentally fixes a few of the problems with the original -- but runs in the browser window.

Yanez says some of the advantages of his version, besides being able to run it from a browser, include open access to video sharing sites (compared with Joost's limited content selection), a webcam chat widget, and right-click functionality for the mouse button.

Posted by Editor at 4:38 PM | Permalink

New technologies have a way of giving rise to new art forms. One of the newest -- and most beautiful -- is a mobile-generated collective artwork emerging from an international art workshop at the Mix Studio in New York, led by French artists Olivier di Pizio and Gonzalo Belmonte.

Di Pizio and Belmonte are bringing together 20 French and American painters to create collaborative art, as they have done for more than 15 years. As in earlier collaborative work, each artist contributes photographs, documents, and other items from his or her own life and uses them in the work. This year, for the first time, the artists also will be using camera phones to populate a real-time collective media blog on Cellfish.com.

You can view the workshop on Cellfish.com, or receive the artists’ creations in real time on your cell phone. You can also go and see the collective digital creation at the FIAF Gallery in New York:

FIAF Gallery at the French Institute Alliance Française, 22 East 60th Street, New York
Free and open to the public, Monday, July 16, through Friday, July 27.
Gallery Hours: Monday through Thursday 11 am to 6 pm; Friday 11 am to 4 pm

Posted by Editor at 11:39 AM | Permalink

Two weeks ago, Google announced that its Maps application now featured street-level imagery of New York, Washington, Dallas and San Francisco. The images, using technology from Immersive Media Corporation, let users travel virtually down the street and look in every direction. Essentially, you can pan, rotate and zoom the camera just by using your mouse. There's a demo and instructions here.

But mapping isn't all that Immersive Media's technology is good for. The company's Web site shows applications for first responders (try clicking on the picture above), oil and gas exploration, tourism, film location scouting and sports broadcasting. The potential applications seem limitless. The demos on Immersive Media's site are videos, unlike the static photos on Google Maps. You can actually change the perspective of the video -- so that you're looking out the back of a car, for example, while you're driving down the street -- and you can stop the video to get a better view and look around some more.

Posted by Editor at 2:54 PM | Permalink

Hard on the heels of Joost comes Babelgum with a very similar offering - a peer-to-peer, ad-supported, streaming Internet TV service featuring commercial rather than user-generated content. Oh, yes, and the founders are Europeans (one of them, Silvio Scaglia, is chief of Fastweb, an Italian broadband telecom company) and the product's name sounds more like a snack food than an entertainment service.

Babelgum opened its beta site today, and while the company warns that this is a "true beta" and glitches are to be expected, the product seems quite clean. The user interface is intuitive and non-intrusive, and I encountered a minimum of the video stuttering that I found to be such a problem with Joost. Unlike Joost, the picture size isn't infinitely adjustable - there are full-screen and window modes, with two sizes for each - but on the other hand the video quality was so good that I didn't feel tempted to play with the screen size. And that's because Babelgum is serious about quality - they require content providers to supply high-resolution files so that users can view videos on full screen.

The quality of the videos themselves (I'm talking about content now, rather than viewing quality) is surprisingly high. The offerings, though limited, include music, news, travelogues, cartoons, documentaries and short features. Like Joost, Babelgum says it expects to line up a large selection of commercial content from both major producers and independents.

The system for finding content needs a little tweaking. There are nine ready-made channels in the channel directory, (though only three of them appear in the menu bar when you first install the software) but they don't include all the content you would think they should. For example, the music channel only seems to contain seven videos, but there's actually lots more music available if you search for it.

You can create custom channels based on tags -- a very nice feature -- but of course the tags are only as good as the people who tagged them. Right now there's nothing tagged with Spike Lee, for example, even though he is represented on the Fiction channel by a short feature. So until there are more users doing more tagging, finding what you want to watch won't be easy.

All in all, Babelgum seems like a strong contender and yet another reason to expect bandwidth demand to keep skyrocketing.

Posted by Editor at 2:18 PM | Permalink

If advertising is going to be the dominant model for broadband video, how can advertisers make sure they're reaching the people they want to reach? One way is to use a "branded entertainment" approach like Cube Fabulous, where sponsors are deeply involved in the programming. But that doesn't really work for the long tail of user-generated video. An alternative approach is offered by adap.tv, which uses technology to analyze the video and audio streams (as well as the metadata, of course, but that's easy) and serve nonintrusive ads relevant to the content. Because the ads are clickthroughs, Adap.tv can monitor what viewers do in response, and fine-tune their algorithms. In this demo, a video of a movie review is overlaid by ads for the movie being discussed.

Metacafe, one of the largest video sites on the Web, has announced that it will use adap.tv's advertising platform.

Posted by Editor at 12:30 PM | Permalink

Have you ever wondered whether your child's fascination with all things gross and creepy could be put to some good purpose? Now it can be. An interactive video series, Grossology Live, aims to teach kids -- mostly in the 8-to-14-year-old range -- about science by presenting them with material guaranteed to make them giggle, squeal and squirm. The series examines what the producers call "the 'impolite' science of the human body"; despite being goofily entertaining, it hews closely to the official science curricula for the targeted age groups.

Grossology Live is broadcast over the Internet to live audiences who interact with the teachers/entertainers via videoconferencing. The underlying technology comes from Glowpoint, a managed video network, and LifeSize, a manufacturer of high-definition videoconferencing equipment. At present, the shows are broadcast only to the Columbus Children's Hospital's Community Education Center in Columbus, Ohio, and the Adventure Science Center in Nashville, Tennessee.

The show is produced by the National Association of Health Education Centers and IDSolutions with funding from the National Science Foundation.

Posted by Editor at 1:16 PM | Permalink

Earlier this month, we reported that Joost, the ambitious P2P Internet TV service, had let its beta testers invite additional users. Immediately after its announcement, Joost was flooded with new users and then with complaints about the quality of the viewing experience.

We waited two more weeks -- long past the time Joost said its technical problems were fixed -- to try it out. The verdict: still not quite ready for prime time.

On the positive side, the user interface is simple and intuitive. The on-screen channel guide and controls, which can be made to vanish with a touch of the Esc key when you don't want to see them, are far easier to use than, say, my cable provider's VoD menu. Keyboard shortcuts are also available.

The sound is fine, even on low-end PC speakers, and the quality of the video is potentially fabulous. I found the small-window mode consistently good, and the full-screen mode occasionally outstanding -- much better than anything on my (standard-definition) TV.

But potential isn't actual, of course. On most channels, the full-screen picture simply isn't clear enough to watch. My guess is that this has to do with the resolution of the original files, rather than with anything related to Joost. Fortunately, it's possible to scale the picture by dragging the corner of the viewscreen, so you can watch any content on the largest screen that's comfortable to view, instead of being relegated to the 2-by-3-inch viewscreen.

A more serious problem is the stuttering of the audio/video stream, which is often annoying enough to deter anyone who isn't writing a review. I don't think the problem lies in my hardware (brand-new laptop, Intel Core Duo CPU with 1.66 GHz) or my connection (cable modem with 10 Mbps downstream, and I really am getting the 10 Mbps). Either Joost isn't scaling up its servers quickly enough or the P2P software still needs more tweaking. When you use P2P for downloads, interruptions don't matter; with streaming video, they matter very much.

The forum on Joost's site is full of advice about how to make the audio/video stream more smooth. Some of these tips and tricks may work -- I don't know. The point is that if Joost aims to be a substitute for TV, it has to be accessible to everyone, not just to the sort of people who enjoy updating the registries on their PCs.

The software is also a bit unstable. After the first time I put it into standby mode, I tried to turn it back on again and got nothing but beeps and error messages. (It wasn't me, honest! I didn't touch it!) I finally had to remove and re-install the software -- a procedure that produced still more error messages. But I persevered, and now the standby/restore function seems to be working properly.

Unless you read the FAQs thoroughly, you may not realize that even after you've stopped watching Joost you are still using enormous amounts of bandwidth, enough to get you a stern warning letter from your ISP, or worse. You actually have to close the icon out of your system tray in order to stop the bandwidth drain -- a fact that Joost will need to make clearer to users when it goes live.

Finally, content is somewhat less than compelling, unless you enjoy trivia contests about music videos. (150 channels and nothing to watch!) But once the technical issues are resolved and the number of users increases, I expect that we'll begin seeing more interesting content as well. UPDATE 5/22: Joost just brought in the Creative Artists Agency (CAA), the world’s leading talent and literary agency, to help it negotiate deals for "the most compelling and entertaining content." That ought to do the trick.

All in all, Joost is a welcome addition to the world of Internet video. And if all the stars align properly, it really could change the way we watch TV.

Posted by Editor at 11:20 AM | Permalink

Veodia thinks anyone should be able to broadcast live TV-quality video. Not just technical whizzes, not just rich folks with high-end equipment, not just amateurs willing to sign away rights to their content. Anyone. Logging on to Veodia, now in beta test, lets you broadcast over the Internet to thousands of computers, cell phones and TVs just by plugging a webcam or DV camcorder into your computer and pressing the "start" button. You can also archive the video for playback on computers, cell phones, iPods and Apple TVs. (Each beta user gets 3GB of storage for videos.)

The company is targeting two main audiences, professional bloggers (amazing that there are now enough of these to constitute a market!) and businesses. Detailed reporting capabilities let users track how many people are watching their videos.

Posted by Editor at 12:49 PM | Permalink

The first Killer App Expo and Conference was held in fiber-wired Fort Wayne, Indiana, the only Verizon FiOS community in the Midwest. Verizon's demonstrations of FiOS TV and gaming apps drew crowds throughout the show, especially on Community Night.

All photos by Ken Lasley unless otherwise noted.

The John & John show: John Wells and John Hughes from Global Online Solutions Network (GOSN) talk about their fiber-based video surveillance application, which they market to real estate developers.



Salesforce.com VP Dan Dal Degan explains the AppExchange, which allows application developers to build and sell on-demand software on the Salesforce.com platform.



Fort Wayne Mayor Graham Richard, who was instrumental in bringing FiOS to his city, gives a keynote address at the conference.



Tim Scott, sales and marketing director for PacketFront, discusses the open-access fiber system in Vasteras, Sweden, where as many as 80 service providers offer broadband services to consumers and businesses.

Photo by Steve Ross.

Scott Lomond, president of SightSpeed, receives an innovation award from Mayor Richard and conference chairman Scott DeGarmo. SightSpeed's main product is a desktop videoconferencing solution, but it also offers a number of other video-based applications.



George Chamoun, Senior Vice President of Synacor, explains Synacor's Web-based portal for broadband providers.

Photo by Steve Ross.

Posted by Editor at 10:52 AM | Permalink

One of the highlights of the Killer App Conference was a presentation on applications for property developers, given by Mike Whaling of Infinisys Electronic Architects. After the session, a number of audience members asked Mike for the list of the applications he spoke about, and he promised to share them with us. You can see the list, and view slides from the presentation, here.

Posted by Editor at 6:13 PM | Permalink

More quick jottings from the final day of the conference (and again, only a few droplets from the fire hose of information that was flowing there):

- Market researcher Mike Render says that fiber-to-the-home is growing faster in the U.S. -- at rates exceeding 100 percent per year -- than earlier forms of broadband at comparable moments in their history. Take rates (percentage of homes passed that are subscribing) are rising for providers other than Verizon, which is building FiOS faster than it can sell it. Homeowners with FTTH, as well as developers, estimate that it adds about $5,000 to the selling price of a house, and businesses are relocating in FTTH communities.

- Humanizing Technologies showed us an easy way to make gadgets (what everyone else calls widgets) for your mobile phone. Their app lets you send dynamic time, weather, stock quotes, horoscopes, or any other web-based information to your phone in about three clicks.

- VizSeek from Imaginestics, using a technology developed in Purdue University, is a video search application for manufacturers. Doodle a picture of the part you're looking for, and you can find it in any parts catalogue on the Web.

Posted by Editor at 12:37 AM | Permalink

The Killer App conference started up in full force today, with demos and presentations of dozens of broadband apps. Whether you're a consumer, a business executive, an educator, a health care provider, a developer, a network provider, a government official or a superhero (just keep reading), there was something here for you.

With four separate tracks and the Applications Theater -- not to mention site visits to two Fort Wayne broadband businesses -- we couldn't see everything. So what follows is just a tiny sampling of the riches on display today:

- StashSpace.com digitizes all those boxes of home-movie videotapes that have been sitting for years in their customers' closets. Then they give customers online tools to edit the videos and show them off to friends and family. (We've written about StashSpace before, when it was still called HomeMovie.com.)

- Network2 searches the Internet for episodic short-form content (translation: series of short videos) and brings the best of them all together in one place. If you're tired of LonelyGirl 15 and you can't figure out what else to watch on the Internet, Network2 will help you find video that's interesting, funny, informative, cool or socially relevant. Are you still wondering about those superheroes? Today's presentation was given by Network2's official superhero, Chris Brogan (at least that was his title du jour -- if you check in with him tomorrow, he may be the company's Grand High Slizmux by then).

Lars Krumme of StashSpace.com (l) and Chris Brogan of Network2 (r).
Photo credit: TechnologyEvangelist.com

- Yesterday, the New Urbanists told us that good urban planning meant designing towns where people could walk to work. Today, we found out about applications that let people work from home. A real live Fort Wayne telecommuter, Tom Miller, told us how fiber-to-the-home had made him more productive in his work as a customer-support field engineer. Other presenters demonstrated Blue Otter, a Mac-based collaboration program designed for the publishing industry, and SightSpeed, a videoconferencing program that's used by many kinds of telecommuters. We've written about SightSpeed before here.

- Here's how high schools in East Allen County, Indiana are using their fiber-based videoconferencing system:
* Teaching classes in German, Latin, creative writing, landscaping, child development, African-American studies, entrepreneurship, Web design, and sports and entertainment marketing. These are classes that couldn't be made generally available without the videoconferencing system to aggregate students from all five high schools.
* Offering students college-level classes from Indiana-Purdue Unversity at Fort Wayne.
* Taking students on virtual field trips to the Baseball Hall of Fame and puppetry workshops, introducing them to their elected officials, and letting them watch surgeries and autopsies.
* Holding professional development sessions for teachers.
* Holding case conferences at a school for the deaf.

Inventor Ray Kurzweil
Photo credit: TechnologyEvangelist.com

- Ray Kurzweil, today's leading inventor, who has launched nine different industries and made computers read, talk, and play music, gave an exciting but dizzying keynote address about the accelerating pace of change. Moore's Law ("The number of transistors on a chip doubles about every two years," according to Intel's official definition) is only one instance of this general acceleration of knowledge, Kurzweil said. In a graph illustrating the pace of change from the evolution of RNA through to the Internet, Kurzweil showed that this acceleration has been astonishingly steady for billions of years. The reason: Every change builds upon the last one.

Kurzweil's lesson: Don't assume that the pace of change over the last 50 years will be replicated over the next 50 years. It won't. It will be immeasurably greater.

The lesson for killer apps: There's no question that any bandwidth we can provide today will be fully utilized in a very short time. Kurzweil foresees that within a few years, computers will disappear as separate devices and will simply be integrated into all of our everyday objects (clothes, eyeglasses, etc.) Everything and everyone, he says, will be permanently connected into a broadband network.

Posted by Editor at 10:04 PM | Permalink

The first-ever conference covering the applications that are driving broadband use opened today in Fort Wayne, Indiana. With standing-room-only crowds in the conference sessions and throngs on the exhibit floor, we're off to a strong start. Longer articles (and pictures, and videos) are coming soon, but in the meantime, a few highlights from Day 1:

- In Bandon, Oregon, a small town that installed a new fiber-to-the-home network, high school students are now staying in town when they graduate, instead of leaving for bigger cities. The local art center is being expanded, a new golf course is being built, and the hotel is being refurbished.

- In Winona, Minnesota, the ambulances are outfitted with videocameras and transmit live video from accident scenes to the hospital emergency room, so the ER can be ready to deal with what's coming their way.

- In Lafayette, Louisiana, the community center sheltered evacuees from Hurricane Katrina in 2005. Because the center was fiber-wired, they quickly set up VoIP service and allowed evacuees to contact their relatives long before anyone else could.

- In West Valley City, Utah, the executive director of the UTOPIA fiber-to-the-home network not only keeps in touch with his grown children by videoconference, he even shares his TV with them through a Slingbox. Seems like fiber communities are getting more channels and better reception than others...

- Global Online Solutions Network is providing a "Safe Site" surveillance application to developers. The company brings in a fiber trunk and a headend and sets up motion sensors that trigger video cameras. The system helps developers monitor the site during building and can provide security services to homeowners once the lots are sold. Because the security team can always see what triggered the alarm, "there are no false alarms," the company's founders say.

- Some property developers are using "virtual flythroughs" on the Web to sell their properties. Others are creating replicas of new developments on Second Life. They can not only give homebuyers an advance look at the development, they can even sell the virtual houses!

Posted by Editor at 11:18 PM | Permalink

A: Vimeo is the most low-key video site we've ever seen. Most of the clips don't appear to have been created for entertainment, for documentation, for instruction, or for any purpose other than reproducing the quirky textures of everyday life -- video on a whim, or found video. There's a guy lying in a mud puddle in the rain, scenes of upstate New York drifting by a car window as the filmer drives home from work, plugs being rearranged in a surge protector, two guys moving a car on the street, as observed from an apartment window....

Some of the content is beautiful, and some of it is silly. Much of it is only meant for friends and family, and isn't visible to visitors who haven't been invited to view it. But the site is generating a culture of serendipity - users celebrated Vimeo's second birthday in February by pushing their record buttons at the same moment (11:00 GMT on February 16) and filming whatever was happening in front of them. Here's one of the results:

Simultaneous Capture 3am Seattle, WA 02/16/07 on Vimeo

Posted by Editor at 3:05 PM | Permalink

There's a wealth of instructional videos on the Web, but finding the one with the information you need can be a challenge. Enter SuTree, a social bookmarking site dedicated to lifelong learning. Whether your goal is to open a wine bottle with the panache of the waiter in the Four Seasons, juggle like a pro or make zillions in the stock market, you can search on SuTree and find a video somewhere on the Web. Some of the content comes from educational institutions, others from self-appointed experts, but everything on the site has been added by someone who liked it and then rated by others who have watched it.

Using SuTree is free, and all of the content it links to is also free. Registration is required in order to add content, but not for searching.

Posted by Editor at 10:07 AM | Permalink

Setting up for the Gathering

Today is the opening of the Gathering, an annual event in Norway that draws thousands of participants from all over Scandinavia -- and the world -- for four days of cyber-competitions. Participants compete for prizes in creative "demos," which the organizers describe as:

...some sort of real-time generated music video or multimedia presentation. Usually a collaborative effort, a demo represents the combined skills of a demo goup, featuring stunning graphics and amazing visual effects synchronized to a kicking soundtrack. Demos usually display state-of-the art 3D graphics, pushing the boundaries of currently available technology to present a spectacular show of light and sound to the viewer. Demos usually feature abstract three-dimensional shapes, and visual representations of advanced mathemathics.

For the less creative, there are also online gaming competitions.

Needless to say, all of this requires a great deal of bandwidth. Swedish-based carrier TeliaSonera supplied the event with a 1 Gbps Internet connection.

Posted by Editor at 11:50 AM | Permalink

What new broadband applications are you waiting for? Tell us what you think the next killer app will be.

Posted by Editor at 8:19 AM | Permalink

Suppose you want to hold a political debate via video...or have a funny-face contest with your friends...or create a video tribute for someone who's important to a lot of people.

Now there's an easy way to do it: Vlip.com.

A vlip is an open-ended string of user-generated videos. Someone starts a vlip, usually with a purpose or theme, and then others can append their own videos to it, one after the other.

To start or add to a vlip, plug in your webcam, click a button, type in your name, click another button, and Vlip.com starts recording right in the browser. Click again when you're done. It's really that simple.

This is a beta launch and there are kinks to be worked out, but vlipping should have the potential to enable new kinds of dialogue, debate, and user-generated craziness. Also worth noting: you don't need to record a vlip in order to watch vlips made by others.

Posted by Editor at 11:42 PM | Permalink

"Never post anything on YouTube you wouldn't want a prospective employer to see," says the conventional wisdom of the day -- but what about the video you want the employer to see? Try posting it on JobMatchPro.

A new site developed by Web2Corp, JobMatchPro is similar to popular sites like Monster and CareerBuilder where job seekers and employers seek and find one another, but with a twist -- along with their written resumes, job seekers can post short videos to introduce themselves to employers. Employers, in turn, can post videos showing why their companies are good places to work.

Video resumes can be general or tailored to a particular job posting. For those who haven't created one before, JobMatchPro has made a series of mildly amusing video clips illustrating what not to do on a video resume (eat, shuffle pieces of paper, etc.).

Will video resumes be used to discriminate against employees on the basis of race, sex, age, weight or other characteristics unrelated to their job qualifications? It's hard to imagine they won't be (and JobMatchPro, to its credit, goes into some detail explaining the equal opportunity laws). On the other hand, they could also have the opposite effect, by giving job candidates a chance to make their case to employers who might not otherwise see them. The net effect is still an unknown.

Posted by Editor at 12:35 PM | Permalink

Think peer-to-peer file sharing, and what comes to mind is massive, Net-wide distribution -- legal or illegal -- of songs and movies. GigaTribe puts the same technology to a different purpose: It lets you share selected files securely among your "tribe," whether that means friends and family or colleagues at work. The members of your tribe can search and download files of any size from the folders you've given them access to on your computer.

In Europe, where the service is called TribalWeb, people often use it to play music stored on their home computers while they're at work, or to transfer contents from an old PC to a new one. Other uses might include sharing pictures and videos of your kids with relatives, showing video walkthoughs of a house to potential buyers, and collaborating with your band to produce music recordings.

Posted by Editor at 7:22 AM | Permalink

"Floods, earthquakes and volcanoes do not need to become disasters," says the International Strategy for Disaster Reduction (ISDR), a Geneva-based consortium dedicated to preventing disasters. Now the ISDR has released a new online game to teach children aged 9 through 16 -- "the future architects, mayors, doctors, and parents of the world" -- how to keep disasters from happening.

The game's object is to build safer villages and cities by locating and constructing houses so they can survive natural hazards, and preparing residents through early warning systems, evacuation plans and education. While the game is single-player (scores are saved and ranked against those of all the other players in the world), the ISDR encourages groups of children in a classroom to play collaboratively so they can discuss strategies. There's additional learning material for students and teachers on the ISDR Web site.

Posted by Editor at 5:01 PM | Permalink

A man lives in Chicago and his 80-year-old mother lives alone in Florida. How do they manage to have dinner together at the same dining table? The Virtual Family Dinner, a new prototype developed by researchers at the Accenture Technology Labs in Chicago, uses “ubiquitous computing” to bring families together.

“Long-distance caregivers live an average of 450 miles and over seven hours away from the person for whom they provide care, and nearly a quarter of the nation’s long-distance caregivers are the primary source of assistance for an elderly relative or friend,” said Dadong Wan, a senior researcher at Accenture Technology Labs and developer of the Virtual Family Dinner prototype. “This concept is intended to bring people together and remove the feelings of isolation common among the elderly and the frustration experienced by many caregivers who are unable to spend as much time with loved ones as they would like."

The Virtual Family Dinner, now being tested in the Lab’s “test kitchen,” uses small ceiling-mounted cameras that act as sensors. These track mom in her kitchen while she prepares a meal. Once the system sees that she has brought dishes to the table, it infers that she is ready to receive company.

A screen, which is transparent when not in use, pops up at the end of the dining room table. A computer application runs through a directory of preregistered family members and friends to find someone who is available for dinner -- or, at least, for a conversation during the meal. This person's image is projected, life-sized and in real time, on the screen – as though sitting at the end of the table - and mom no longer feels like she’s eating alone.

Accenture will be collaborating with university researchers to study the impact of the Virtual Family Dinner on the health of homebound older adults. They will be looking at factors such as whether the homebound adults eat more or better food and experience better quality of life, and whether caregivers feel less stress. Studies have already shown that people at high risk for undernourishment consume more than 100 calories more per meal if they eat with someone else.

Posted by Editor at 4:45 PM | Permalink

Video sharing sites are filling ever more specialized niches, and Xpeeri has created an unusual niche of its own. The site, still in beta, is dedicated to preserving the 8mm home movies of the past, in order to "save these historical and irreplaceable records before they slowly fade and are forever lost." Community members include both personal collectors and professional archivists.

A nifty facility, the GeoChronoVideo Locator, helps site visitors find videos from specific times and places. Other resources include help finding dealers who can convert old 8mm films to digital formats.

And if you're too young to remember the hula hoop craze of 1959, here's one family's experience of it.

Posted by Editor at 4:49 PM | Permalink

Computer-powered visualization tools that present information in a visually appealing, dynamic, and navigable way not only improve access to information but also encourage a better understanding of how pieces of information relate to each other.

With TouchGraph, a Java-based application platform, you can create dynamic visualization charts through an online interface.

An example of the TouchGraph application in action can be found at Mike-Love.net, a Genealogy of Influence visualization that shows the connections between 500 of the most influential writers, artists, philosophers, scientists, and mathematicians of Western culture. Roll over any of the names and you'll see a brief blurb about the person. Click on a name, and the entire chart morphs into a chart centered on the name you selected. If you right-click on the lines of influence and select the "Hide Edge" command, you can rework the graph to reflect a clearer picture of how one person inspired another.

TouchGraph's solution also includes search functionality, connections to remote and local databases, the ability to read data in multiple formats and analytic capabilities such as cluster detection and centrality ranking.

Posted by Editor at 3:38 PM | Permalink

With so many video-hosting services available, as well as an increasingly diverse product base of portable media players, consumers often need a quick and easy way to transcode video from one format into another. HeyWatch.com, an online service, lets users upload videos and transcode them to any of a number of formats.

With HeyWatch’s free service, users are allowed up to 10 encode sessions per month, and can host up to six hours of raw video and 12 hours of encoded video, with a maximum video length of 10 minutes. Premium services offer more encode sessions and increased hosting capacity.

HeyWatch also lets you grab a video straight from a Web site (including popular video sharing sites like YouTube) for transcoding. There's also a podcast client that lets you receive your encoded videos as soon as they’re ready, instead of having to check back on the site.

Posted by Editor at 12:01 AM | Permalink

Have you ever felt like playing God -- shaping continents, creating rivers, pulling mountains up out of the ground? Landcraft, a 3-D terrain generator created by a team of Russian developers, may be just what you've been looking for.

The online interface lets you select surface textures, add undulations and change the angle and intensity of the sun’s light. Try replicating a real-world environment, or get creative and sculpt a Martian landscape.

This new method for visualizing terrain promises to be useful to developers and students alike (no more flour-and-water paste landscapes for me!).

Posted by Editor at 1:46 PM | Permalink

The Spitzer Space Telescope, launched in 2003, is the largest infrared telescope ever launched into space. During the two and a half years of its mission, it took pictures of the cosmos by detecting infrared energy (or heat) radiated by objects in space. The telescope captured a series of spectacular images from such formations as the Orion Nebula and the Andromeda Galaxy, and even peered into the galactic center of the Milky Way.

These images are now available for viewing here. You can not only see them but actually zoom in and pan on the images, a feat made possible by Zoomify, whose software lets you create zoomable, interactive images for any Web site. The no-frills version of Zoomify is free.

Posted by Editor at 3:23 PM | Permalink

"We want to know what young people think," say the sponsors of Film Your Issue's 2007 film competition. Young filmmakers (ages 16 through 25) have until April 15 to shoot and edit a short film on a contemporary issue of their choice and upload it to a microsite hosted by Yahoo!'s video editing software subsidiary, Jumpcut. Not only will the finalist films be shown on the FYI Web site, but they may be screened at the United Nations and broadcast on Starz. Winners may also receive a summer internship with Universal Pictures, another sponsor.

Posted by Editor at 1:27 PM | Permalink

The Intelligent Community Forum, a think tank focused on economic development in the broadband economy, recently ran an article about broadband applications by KillerApp.Com editor Masha Zager in its newsletter, iCommunity. The article describes the new opportunities broadband is creating for entertainment, health, education, business, social participation, home design, public safety, art and science. You can read the article here -- or read what we've written about all of these subjects on KillerApp.Com.

Posted by Editor at 2:58 PM | Permalink

No, not that Amazon, the one in South America. Marathon swimmer Martin Strel, who has previously swum the Danube, the Mississippi and the Yangtze, is planning to swim 3,375 miles from Peru to the Atlantic Ocean starting next month. The feat, if successful, will be not only an athletic achievement but a milestone in telemedicine. An international medical team headed by Dr. Rifat Latifi of University of Arizona's Telemedicine Program will be responsible for keeping Strel and his support team safe during the 70-day-long trip.

Using equipment provided by telemedicine companies Second Opinion and General Devices, the virtual medical team will monitor Strel round the clock. Strel has dedicated this swim to the preservation of the rainforest, to raising awareness for Alzheimer's disease and other neurodegenerative disorders and to promoting telemedicine as a valuable tool in bringing modern medicine to remote areas.

Posted by Editor at 2:09 PM | Permalink

Telephone conversations may never be the same again, now that KishKish has introduced its Lie Detector. An add-on for Skype's voice over IP service, the KishKish Lie Detector gives you a graphical representation of the stress levels of the other party to the conversation. For the first 10 seconds, the software calibrates the speaker's general stress level. Then, it monitors changes in stress as the person speaks. The theory is that because lying is stressful, it tightens the vocal cords and pushes the voice into above-normal registers. KishKish also makes other add-ons for Skype, including answering-machine software and a conversation recorder.

Posted by Editor at 10:56 AM | Permalink

Internet gambling...online dispute resolution...community review of patent applications. These classes aren't just about the law of the virtual world, they're taught in the virtual world. The New York Law School opened its State of Play Academy this fall, using software from There.com, a teen-oriented virtual world.

During the fall of 2006, SOPA offered 10 free online classes, in which participants were represented by avatars and the virtual campus consisted of a classroom, library, coffeehouse and courtroom. Instructors and attendees communicated in real time, using There.com's voice and text chat features. Next year, the law school will hold several for-credit classes in the virtual world setting. They'll also use the platform as a place for students to meet with their alumni mentors.

Posted by Editor at 12:32 PM | Permalink

Researchers at the University of California, San Diego are getting ready to test a new application that will decipher the genetic code of microbes in the world's oceans. This tool will help scientists understand how microbes function in their ecosystems, find out what effect humans are having on those ecosystems, and possibly learn more about the evolution of life on earth. But the application, known as "CAMERA" (short for Community Cyberinfrastructure for Advanced Marine Microbial Ecology Research and Analysis), makes use of enormous datasets in many different places. It's going to rely on the National LambdaRail, a high-speed academic network, to tie them all together.

Posted by Editor at 5:04 PM | Permalink

Even if sports fans are leading the stampede toward high-definition TV, it turns out that there's more you can do with your new 50-inch plasma screen HDTV than just watch the Super Bowl.

For example, you could create a home art gallery.

Gallery Player sells high-definition collections of fine art and photography from the Metropolitan Museum of Art, National Geographic, and other museums and publications. (The Degas pastel drawing shown above is from the Musee d'Orsay, Paris.) The collections, which are available via broadband, Comcast video on demand and DVD, play on your television screen with a musical accompaniment. Pictures rotate every few minutes so you won't burn a hole in the screen.

Posted by Editor at 11:39 PM | Permalink

Videoconferencing can make a significant difference in the fight against global warming, says a report from the World Wildlife Federation and the European Telecommunications Network Operators Association.

Based on experience in Germany, the report estimates that reducing European business travel by 20 percent is a realistic goal that would save 22 million tons of carbon dioxide per year. How to achieve this goal? Replace corporate travel departments with corporate meeting departments that evaluate which meetings need to be held in person; hold decentralized conferences that take place in several cities at once.

The chart below shows the potential for reducing carbon emissions in Europe through videoconferencing.

Source: ETNO/WWF

Posted by Editor at 3:34 PM | Permalink

Ultra-broadband networks like Internet2 open up new artistic possibilities. Here, improvisational groups at UCLA and Stanford work together in a joint theatrical performance. The high bandwidth of the academic network made it possible to achieve exceptional video and audio quality without any perceptible lags in the timing. A group of theater sound design students from UCLA worked on the sound environments and sound effects for the performance; designing the sound to be engaging in both locations required rethinking traditional theatrical sound design methods.

Posted by Editor at 5:11 PM | Permalink

Got a great business idea? You have until February 15 to pitch it to top Silicon Valley venture capitalists and win six months' free office space as well as networking and mentorship contacts from leading venture firms. The pitch must be in the form of a 30-second video that you shoot and upload from your mobile phone. You can also have your friends and colleagues upload video votes and testimonials in support of your business concept.

The contest is sponsored by MyWaves, a service that delivers video to mobile phones over 3G networks. MyWaves provides as many as 10,000 video channels that consumers can subscribe to, ranging from the sublime (religious services) to the ridiculous (college-boy humor), with everything from cooking lessons to dance concerts in between. MyWaves is free to consumers.

Posted by Editor at 11:48 AM | Permalink

Dash Express won't be here for a few more months, so we haven't officially sighted it yet, but it sounds promising: the first Internet-connected GPS device. When it's installed in your car, it automatically receives updated maps and software over a wireless connection, finds destinations and creates routes.

Unlike standard GPS, Dash is a social application. Dash drivers can share their speeds and locations to create a data base of travel times for various road segments. When a driver requests a route, Dash presents up to three options, with drive-time forecasts based on the collective experience of the other drivers. Since the data base is updated in real time, current road conditions can be taken into account -- the application doesn't assume that there's always one best route from Point A to Point B.

Posted by Editor at 5:24 PM | Permalink

Civil War buffs will soon be able to tour Pennsylvania's Civil War battlefields via Google Earth. The State of Pennsylvania hopes the virtual tourists will then be inspired to visit these scenes in reality.

The state is giving $285,000 to Google Earth, Carnegie Mellon University, NASA, the Pennsylvania Tourism Office and the National Civil War Museum to develop software that will display and promote Pennsylvania's Civil War trails. (The technology could potentially be used for other Pennsylvania sites as well.) Users will be able to see a panoramic view along a trail, zoom in to read the inscription on a monument, or go back in time to witness the change of seasons on a historic battlefield.

The technology funded by the state grant is called Gigapan, short for Gigapixel Panoramas. It combines thousands of digital images to create a panoramic image with more than a billion pixels. When the panoramic images are combined with time-lapse, users can explore the space through time as well.

Posted by Editor at 5:24 PM | Permalink

At an open-air market near where I live, a man sits all day long demonstrating a kitchen tool that dices, slices and chops vegetables. He must use up enormous quantities of vegetables each day, but he never fails to draw a crowd. As much as Americans love gadgets, we seem even more fond of watching gadgets in action. On Expo TV, you can see almost any kind of product -- from crib toys to home fitness gyms to, yes, slicers and dicers -- reviewed and demonstrated by someone who has bought them. These "videopinions" don't just tell you what the reviewers love or hate about the product, they show you.

If you're out of ideas for holiday gifts, check out Expo TV's holiday shopping guide featuring members' gift-giving recommendations, along with holiday buying tips from the staff.

Posted by Editor at 2:28 PM | Permalink

As the holiday season approaches, we can't help but notice how Web-savvy Santa Claus has become. Not content with delivering bandwidth-gobbling devices to everyone on his list, he's now making personal appearances online. Internet-connected children can follow his progress courtesy of NORAD, which diverts its high-tech equipment from missile defense to Santa tracking for a brief period each year. NORAD says it uses radar, satellites, jet fighters and especially its Santa Cams to capture real-time video footage (hoofage?) of Santa and his reindeer.

Santa also appears in the online "Shave Santa" contest, where viewers (who must be 18 or older, which seems to eliminate many of his fans) can compete to reshape his beard, mustache and bushy eyebrows. The winner will receive a Remington electric shaver.

Finally, Cisco, for the third year in a row, is giving hospitalized children a chance to see and speak with Santa through its Internet video telephones. Children in Canada, Germany and the United States will be given access to special videophones with a one-button connection to the North Pole. The children and their families will gather in hospital common areas where the videophones will be set up; in most of the hospitals, the phones will also be brought to patients' rooms so that even children who are too sick to leave their rooms can participate. Santa's gifts for the children will be delivered courtesy of Cisco and Mattel.

Posted by Editor at 11:10 AM | Permalink

Are you yearning for the simple life? You can get away from it all (for a little while, anyway) at Farm.TV, a Web site dedicated to Canadian farming. Nearly all of Farm.TV's content, which showcases farms for sale, farming equipment, agricultural businesses and farming news, is in the form of short video clips that you can download or stream. In addition to glorious pictures of the Canadian countryside, the site features a series of poetry readings by a "well known Cowboy Poet in southern Alberta."

And of course, if you actually are a Canadian farmer, Farm.TV has plenty of useful information for you, presented in a clear and accessible fashion.

Posted by Editor at 2:16 PM | Permalink

How do you know whether a lawyer is the right one for your case -- or whether a law firm is the kind of place you'd like to work? Law fi