We’ve been holding out for some kind of partnership that would bring music to Facebook for a while now. Well, no dice on that, kids. However, a recently launched Chrome plugin called Music+ is sure to tide you over until that glorious day comes.

Music+ is a plugin that was developed during the Echo Nest Social Music App Challenge. It uses the music intelligence service’s API (as well as Facebook’s API) to make it easy to find and listen to music while surfing the web.

Simply install the plugin in Chrome, and start discovering music. At its simplest, you can pull up a toolbar in which you can search for playable music to listen to while browsing (courtesy of Rdio and MP3s on blogs). Those songs can be shared with friends on Facebook via message, or they can be posted as a playable stream on your wall.

Start surfing, and the app gets interesting. If you go to a blog and highlight a band name and right-click, you can listen to songs by that artist instantly. However, the app really shines when used with Facebook. You’ll have to disable secure browsing in order for it to work (which is a pain), but once you do, every artist on the site will have a “Play” button next to their name, allowing you to listen to tracks by that artist right within Facebook. You can then surf around the site as usual, without having to stay on the page to continue listening (as seen with Facebook Page apps like Bandpage).

The app also adds a column to the left of any band Page containing similar artists, an awesome addition when it comes to music discovery. It also allows you to add artists to your queue for later listening.

All in all, this is an awesome app when it comes to facilitating music discovery. No more toggling over to YouTube or a music subscription service to check out a band while reading. It’s all woven into the Facebook browsing experience.

More About: Echo Nest, facebook, music, social media

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We’ve been holding out for some kind of partnership that would bring music to Facebook for a while now. Well, no dice on that, kids. However, a recently launched Chrome plugin called Music+ is sure to tide you over until that glorious day comes.

Music+ is a plugin that was developed during the Echo Nest Social Music App Challenge. It uses the music intelligence service’s API (as well as Facebook’s API) to make it easy to find and listen to music while surfing the web.

Simply install the plugin in Chrome, and start discovering music. At its simplest, you can pull up a toolbar in which you can search for playable music to listen to while browsing (courtesy of Rdio and MP3s on blogs). Those songs can be shared with friends on Facebook via message, or they can be posted as a playable stream on your wall.

Start surfing, and the app gets interesting. If you go to a blog and highlight a band name and right-click, you can listen to songs by that artist instantly. However, the app really shines when used with Facebook. You’ll have to disable secure browsing in order for it to work (which is a pain), but once you do, every artist on the site will have a “Play” button next to their name, allowing you to listen to tracks by that artist right within Facebook. You can then surf around the site as usual, without having to stay on the page to continue listening (as seen with Facebook Page apps like Bandpage).

The app also adds a column to the left of any band Page containing similar artists, an awesome addition when it comes to music discovery. It also allows you to add artists to your queue for later listening.

All in all, this is an awesome app when it comes to facilitating music discovery. No more toggling over to YouTube or a music subscription service to check out a band while reading. It’s all woven into the Facebook browsing experience.

More About: Echo Nest, facebook, music, social media

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A little while back, YouTube launched an online town hall to get the public interested and voting on the issues that matter most, and now the video site has released an infographic showing some of the results.

Every week YouTube posts user-submitted questions and U.S. representatives respond with short videos. Users then watch two videos head-to-head and vote on their favorite. Party affiliation is hidden until after the vote to get the public listening to ideas rather than thinking along party lines.

In two months of existence, YouTube’s town hall received 50 videos from U.S. representatives viewed a cumulative 1.3 million times. The most viewed video is a response from Senator Jerry Moran, R.-Kan., speaking about American economic growth.

The infographic below highlights some other data points, like most viewed topics and which issues received the most votes. There is even more data on the YouTube blog. The team went through all the town hall transcripts to find out which words were most used by each party. For example, while addressing the topic of Afghanistan, Republicans talked about “progress,” “withdrawal” and “success,” whereas Democrats talked about “war,” “mission” and “security.”

Take a look at the graphic and the stats and let us know what you think. Also look out for this week’s topics: Spending cuts in the budget, transparency about the productivity of legislators and the cost of the war in Afghanistan.

More About: 2012 election, politics, video, youtube

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Republicans are gearing up for a fight at the Ames Straw Poll in Iowa. It’s often seen as a preliminary barometer on which candidates are really in the running and which should duck out.

Social media is also getting ready. Google launched a digital soapbox and released some search stats, plus a new site has popped up dedicated to tracking the presidential fight on Twitter. This is the Week in Politics & Digital.

Google Creates Digital Soapbox

Google has paired with The Iowa Republican to create a digital soapbox at the Ames Straw Poll this weekend. Google will have a tent set up where candidates, elected officials and everyday Republicans can have their voices heard on key issues. Videos filmed at that tent will then be posted onto The Iowa Republican‘s YouTube channel.

Michele Bachmann Leads in Google’s Search Study

Google did some digging to see which candidates and topics are trending ahead of the Ames Straw Poll. The Google Public Sector and Elections Lab found that Minnesota Congresswoman Michele Bachmann is the most-searched announced candidate in Iowa right now by a huge margin. She kept that lead even when compared against search for former Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin and the soon-to-announce Texas Gov. Rick Perry. However, Perry is the current leader in search terms on a national scale. The most-searched issue coming out of Iowa (and in the rest of the country) is jobs, by a large margin.

Stay tuned if these change after the poll or after Perry officially announces his presidential bid.

Keep Track of the 2012 Fight on Twitter

Golnik Strategies and P2B Strategies recently launched 2012Tweets.com, a comprehensive web portal aggregating all things Twitter in the run-up to the 2012 election. There are RSS-like feeds of Twitter updates divided by “Press and Pundits,” “Candidates and Staff” and “Grassroots.” There is also a breakdown for each Republican candidate with basic biographical info, links to their social profiles and online listings for their staff members.

Image courtesy of Flickr, Vince_Lamb

More About: 2012 election, politics, social media, week in digital politics

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YouTube sensation Rebecca Black might have gone from anonymous California middle school student to online celebrity overnight, but that doesn’t mean she isn’t still bullied like millions of other kids.

Black’s viral song “Friday” has amassed more than 167 million views on YouTube, been parodied by celebrities and musicians and was covered on the hit show Glee. Mainstream artists like Katy Perry and Lady Gaga have given their support to Black and “Friday.” Black has even poked fun at herself and the song’s lyrics.

The song might be derided and mocked (and at Mashable, we’re certainly not immune from taking part in some of the mockery), but it’s also been one of the biggest viral sensations of 2011. Five months after the video first appeared online, 14-year-old Rebecca Black is a bona fide star.

Fame has its consequences, though. In an interview aired this week on ABC’s Nightline, Black revealed that she was forced to quit middle school because of real-world harassment. Constant bullying over the lyrics of “Friday” and harassment over her newfound fame made it impossible for Black to continue going to school. Black’s mom is now home-schooling the teen.

Teenage harassment, online and off, is a sad, if unstoppable, part of life. Although politicians, celebrities and activists are doing what they can to try to stop cyber-bullying and harassment, most of these initiatives aren’t designed to deal with the type of harassment that comes from overnight success and online fame.

Black is famous, in large part, because “Friday” is loathed and despised. It’s developed its own place in popular culture, but the reality is the song and the artist are famous because of online mockery. It would be naive to think that that online mockery — some of which crosses the line from joking and into territory that is vicious and cruel — wouldn’t have real-world consequences.

So the question becomes — is online fame worth the real-world consequences? Let us know by voting in our poll and sounding off in the comments.

Is Online Fame Worth the Offline Consequences?

More About: cyber-bullying, Friday, Rebecca Black, trending

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Do you hate that your favorite web service can’t be used in your build scripts? Well, are you sure that’s the case? I’ll show you how to use a popular tool, Phing – which is essentially a port of the popular Apache Ant for PHP – to query the Nettuts+ Prefixr API in today’s quick tip.

Final Sample Phing Project

<?xml version="1.0"?>

<project name="demo" default="prefixr">
	<property name="css.path" value="css/style.css" />
	<target name="prefixr">
		<echo msg="Updating your stylesheet" />
		<loadfile property="css.min" file="${css.path}" />
		<exec command="curl -sSd css='${css.min}' http://prefixr.com/api/index.php > ${css.path}" />
	</target>

</project>

Conclusion

The more I use Phing, the more I realize just how powerful it is. While many prefer Apache Ant for its portability, with Phing, I can use my existing PHP knowledge to create any new tasks or filters that I require. That’s incredibly powerful and convenient. What’s your build tool of choice?

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The Spark of Genius Series highlights a unique feature of startups and is made possible by Microsoft BizSpark. If you would like to have your startup considered for inclusion, please see the details here.

Name: Movellas

Quick Pitch: Movellas is like YouTube for ebooks.

Genius Idea: Letting anyone publish and share his or her own ebook.

When novels composed text-by-text on tiny cellphone screens started making their way to the top of bestseller lists in Japan, Joram Felbert thought he could bring the same concept to Denmark with an educational spin.

Movellas, the text-message writing platform he launched in March 2010, soon found partners in about 25 schools. But it was expensive to send stories one text at a time and hard to find much of an audience without breaking the bank.

Instead of pursuing the SMS idea further, the company morphed into a platform that anyone can use for creating and sharing ebooks. About 10,000 short works — many chapter by chapter — have been published on the site since it launched in December. Its biggest demographic is adolescent girls, particularly those who dabble in the Justin Bieber fan fiction genre.

“A lot of the girls are dreaming of becoming an author, so it’s the first step for them to try to see how their skills are working,” Felbert says.

After an author uploads a story, he or she can share it with friends through email or on social networks. Others can either open the book in a reader on the site or with iBooks. If they like what they read, they can become a “fan” and get updated on new works by that author.

The Movellas community currently writes mostly in Danish, but the company is making efforts to expand to English-speaking countries. It plans to set up an office in London within the next few months.

Unsurprisingly, it won’t be the only platform focusing on aspiring English-language writers. Figment, Protagonize, WeBook and WritersCafe are a handful of the websites that have created a similar publishing platform.

Movellas stands out with its mobile ebook format and its focus on adolescents. Depending on how you look at it, the site could serve as a more or less narcissistic version of LiveJournal, with a literary spin. It does not, as WeBook advertises, seem to be for “the aspiring novelist hoping to hit the best-seller list.”

Like Figment, Movellas sees a potential revenue stream in charging for the work of its most successful authors. Advertising is another option.

The success of either model depends largely on how Felbert’s theory about young writers pans out.

“The users prefer to read content that is written by people their own age and is community content,” he says.

The Spark of Genius Series highlights a unique feature of startups and is made possible by Microsoft BizSpark, a startup program that gives you three-year access to the latest Microsoft development tools, as well as connecting you to a nationwide network of investors and incubators. There are no upfront costs, so if your business is privately owned, less than three years old, and generates less than U.S.$1 million in annual revenue, you can sign up today.

More About: ebooks, Movellas

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Sure, social music service Turntable.fm is addictive and fun. But after a while, watching all those avatars bobbing their heads can get a little dull. Isn’t there anything else we could do in a chatroom together, besides listen to five DJs?

Enter Chill, a new service that allows you to watch videos with friends and strangers.

Chill comes from the founders of Ad.ly and Namesake, and is very similar to Turntable.fm in style and execution. You must have a Facebook friend already on Chill in order to join. Once you choose an avatar, you can either create a room or join one that already exists (there aren’t too many options at present, as the site just launched Wednesday). Rooms can be shared on Twitter or via email.

Once in the room, you can load up your VJ queue with videos — you can search for videos on YouTube or Vimeo within the site, or add a direct URL to any other online video. You then get up on the VJ stage and start spinning videos. Other users vote on whether they like your vids are not (thumbs up, or thumbs down), which garners you points. Right now, however, those points don’t score you cooler avatars, as on Turntable.fm. But those are coming soon, we gather.

The site’s interface is rather lovely — if a bit cheesy — and we could really see the idea taking off, especially with bands looking to premiere music videos. Sure, it’s not a wholly original idea (remember YouTubeSocial?), but it’s coming at a time when people are already interested in social listening and viewing.

Would you watch videos in a chat room on Chill? Let us know in the comments.

[via Mrdocrock]

More About: Chill, music, startup, turntable.fm, video, Vimeo, youtube

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Imagine innocently launching your Facebook app one night and waking up to a bevy of emails saying that Mark Zuckerberg thinks the thing that you built is spamming up HIS precious platform. And let’s say that your app is like a DJ interface for videos, like a Turntable.fm for YouTube. And did I mention that it’s also a pivot for your startup (Namesake), much like Turntable.fm was a pivot from Stickybits.

Add an investment offer from Michael Arrington and a chat with said Zuckerberg and you get today in the life of Chill founders Dan Gould and Brian Norgard, who, because of a stray autopost to former Facebook Platform manager Dave Morin’s Facebook Wall, were so bombarded by user demand this morning that they had to close the gates to their product, which is now just an email sign-in page. Gould and Norgard plan on letting in Chill users slowly this time (those interested can sign up here), they’ve learned their lesson the hard way.

An outgrowth of the synchronous video viewing activity the founders were seeing on discussion aggregator Namesake, Gould and Norgard decided to build out the Chill product five weeks ago. Users sign up with Facebook Connect (sans spammy message this time) and are immediately given the option to start a Lounge or hang out in an already existing Lounge. Lounges are the equivalent of DJ rooms in Turntable.

Once in a Chill Lounge you can find videos to add to your queue by searching Vimeo or YouTube or plopping in a direct link in the Find Videos tab on your right. Once in a queue a video will have to wait its turn among the other videos in line in order to get played. Again like Turntable you can thumb up and thumb down a video selection and chat with other users. An admin feature will eventually be added so that users who create the room have some say in which videos get played or skipped.

Sure there are other places to watch videos with friends online; Socialcam lets you do it with your Facebook Friends and Google Plus, if it would ever work, lets you share YouTube videos with randoms and people in your circles.

But, while Chill is buggy and basically a direct analogue of Turntable, it is the only app I’ve seen thus far that offers an extended and open synchronous viewing experience, a social layer for video watching where anybody can join and become a DJ. Fifteen minutes in the Alexiatown Chill room and I wanted to stay there all day, gorging on videos like “Cutest Bear Attack Ever” and “2CHELLOS Cover Nirvana Classic ‘Smells Like Teen Spirit.” I was actually making delight noises, by myself, in our office.

“We’ve built a culture around sharing links to YouTube videos. How many times have you been looking at a video on your laptop and spun it around and said ‘Hey you’ve got to check this out?’,” Norgard says, describing the appeal of Chill. The act of sharing a YouTube link is essentially isolating, in that the receiver must go off for a period of 3-4 minutes to consume the content on their own. With Chill you have a peanut gallery.

Norgard and Gould’s future plans include “fixing everything that’s not working” as well as including an option to build private rooms. Norgard tells me that they’re still trying to figure it out, “The interesting thing about the consumer Internet space is that it happens so fast. You only learn the mistakes when you’re in the game. Pivot can be used as a pejorative but for us this is keeping our heads on a swivel.”

Note: As noted above, TechCrunch founder Michael Arrington is investing in Chill. You can read more about his investment policy here.

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Launching officially to the public today is a new venture called MediaCore, brought to you by Damien Tanner and Stuart Bowness, the former of whom was responsible for Pusher, a solution that adds realtime tech to apps that was funded by the Heroku guys, among others, back in June.

Tanner and Bowness are launching MediaCore to provide any old small business with the ability to roll out their own YouTube, allowing the organizations to control that experience from end-to-end. In other words, MediaCore is a SaaS video publishing platform (complete with mobile apps) that provides any user or organization with the ability to create and control their own video site. And it’s all about good looks.

As to how it works, customers upload content into the platform’s cloud-based infrastructure and let videos play through MediaCore’s player, which, among other things, automatically determines which browser the user is connecting with so that they don’t have to worry about differences between Flash and HTML5. The player sorts that out for you, using HTML5 whenever possible.

Visitors can browse video collections through a cool visual guide, and the platform allows owners to easily organize their videos by category, or tag, and automatically sorts content by relevance and popularity. Users can add logos, backgrounds, and play with CSS to customize the appearance of the site. Plus, you can add your own domain, take advantage of podcasting, and quite a few other nifty tools. Considering the fact that creating a full-service video platform is no easy feat, MediaCore is offering a pretty cool white label solution that looks good and doesn’t require a lot technical know-how.

MediaCore is currently offering a 15-day free trial, and after that, plans start at $99 a month. Those plans include custom domains, white label player, custom branding, automated encoding, social video embeds, etc. But the best part is that Android and iOS apps come with every account, while managing to look pretty damn good, too. Coming next? According to Tanner and Bowness, it’s private video, profiles, and paywalls.

To get the platform off and running, the startup is in the process of closing a seed round of angel funding from Andrew Wilkinson, the founder and CEO of MetaLab and Jesse Ma of Gawker Media. While the founders declined to give specifics, the round is likely in the hundreds of thousands. (Of dollars, that is.)

When I asked them what the inspiration was for MediaCore, they told me that other video platforms out there are stacked with engineers and often pay little attention to design, resulting in crappy interfaces and a series of botched user experiences. So, after running an open source version of MediaCore for a year, they’re bringing their SaaS platform to market, in an attempt to lead with design first and make it easy to use.

The beta version of the platform has already attracted over 1,100 companies, including London University, Mentor Graphics, TechVibes, Indiana University, and a variety of Fortune 500 companies. As one might guess from its early customers and the scalable cloud storage, the product is aimed at SMBs, but the founders told me that within the year they will be launching a series of personal plans that will be offered below the current $99-a-month pricing.

MediaCore also plans to launch a Tumblr-like theme store in the near future, which will allow users to buy themes and customize their sites, all working via an API (a la Tumblr).

All in all, when the paywalls roll out and a proper iPad interface drops, MediaCore is probably going to essentially be the video version of OnSwipe. Is that a good thing? You tell us.

For more, check out MediaCore at home here or a front-end demo, click here.

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I can’t decide whether or not Michelangelo would roll over in his grave or jump for joy if he saw this app. Then again, Michelangelo would probably faint from seeing a light bulb, so who knows how he’d react to tablet applications. In any case, the Sculpt 123D iPad app from Autodesk looks like a really cool way get your hands dirty with an art form that the majority of us have no experience with: sculpting.

You start with a basic shape, like a car or a person, and then get to use different tools to “sculpt” that shape into what you’d like it to be. The app also has stamps that you can adjust and add to sculptures. If there’s something you can’t find in the Sculpt 123D library, Autodesk has that covered too. The app lets you take a picture with your iPad and then stencil in the imagery on a sculpture. So theoretically, you could probably create a pretty life-like sculpture of a friend, or yourself (if you’re in a narcissistic mood).

Let’s say even though you’ve taken pictures and browsed through the shape library a billion times, you still can’t find what you need for this all-important sculpture project. Well, Autodesk has a five extra packs of shapes that can be purchased within the app. Once your project is finished, you can share a screenshot of the masterpiece through Facebook, Flickr, email, or YouTube. “YouTube?” you ask. “Why would I upload a still image to YouTube?” Well, because Sculpt 123D lets you create turntable videos of your final product.

The app is available today for the iPad only, and is free for a limited time in the Apple App Store. Whenever the “limited time” comes to an end, the app will cost $.99. Jump past the break to check out the Sculpt 123D demo video.

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I can’t decide whether or not Michelangelo would roll over in his grave or jump for joy if he saw this app. Then again, Michelangelo would probably faint from seeing a light bulb, so who knows how he’d react to tablet applications. In any case, the Sculpt 123D iPad app from Autodesk looks like a really cool way get your hands dirty with an art form that the majority of us have no experience with: sculpting.

You start with a basic shape, like a car or a person, and then get to use different tools to “sculpt” that shape into what you’d like it to be. The app also has stamps that you can adjust and add to sculptures. If there’s something you can’t find in the Sculpt 123D library, Autodesk has that covered too. The app lets you take a picture with your iPad and then stencil in the imagery on a sculpture. So theoretically, you could probably create a pretty life-like sculpture of a friend, or yourself (if you’re in a narcissistic mood).

Let’s say even though you’ve taken pictures and browsed through the shape library a billion times, you still can’t find what you need for this all-important sculpture project. Well, Autodesk has a five extra packs of shapes that can be purchased within the app. Once your project is finished, you can share a screenshot of the masterpiece through Facebook, Flickr, email, or YouTube. “YouTube?” you ask. “Why would I upload a still image to YouTube?” Well, because Sculpt 123D lets you create turntable videos of your final product.

The app is available today for the iPad only, and is free for a limited time in the Apple App Store. Whenever the “limited time” comes to an end, the app will cost $.99. Jump past the break to check out the Sculpt 123D demo video.

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<img src="http://7.mshcdn.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/07/youtube-chart-360.jpg" alt="" title="youtube-chart-360" width="275" height="" class="alignright size-full wp-image-670701"

Quick story: I went to the barber’s recently and the guy cutting my hair told me about some video on YouTube that showed a monkey shooting an AK-47. Since Mashable had just written about the video, I said “Oh, you mean for that new Planet of the Apes movie?”

“No,” he replied. “This is a monkey shooting a gun.”

The lesson: Either we were talking about two totally different videos or, in this case, people don’t necessarily connect your viral video with the product it was intended to promote. This could be a worrying trend, since the new wave of viral marketers go out of their way to bury any reference to the sponsor.

But the efficacy of these videos is beside the point for our current purposes. What’s important for the Mashable Global Ads Chart, our list of the 20 most-shared ads, is views. In raw numbers, these are the video ads that the world spent the most time watching in July. As usual, there’s a random assortment of fake virals, outright commercials and the same videos that keep popping up month after month. And, oh yeah, there’s that monkey with the gun.

Note: The list below does not include music videos, user-generated content or movie trailers. Unruly Media’s Viral Video Chart tracks 18 million shares a day through third-party APIs.

20 Most-Shared Video Ads, July 2011

“Ape With AK-47″ (Twentieth Century Fox’s Rise of the Planet of the Apes)

There’s something magical about a monkey and an AK-47. That’s the only conclusion to draw from the 11 million views that this video has drawn since June 13. The viral video is one of several that Fox released to promote its upcoming movie Rise of the Planet of the Apes, which hits theaters on August 5.

“Crazy Marriage Proposal – Guy falls off building!!!” (Neuro Water)

In another one of those “is this for real?” viral ads, a guy executes a fairly elaborate marriage proposal possibly with the goal of marketing Neuro Water.

“2D Photography Rube Goldberg” (2D Photography)

Rube Goldberg contraptions are a mainstay of viral videos, whether they’re for
OK GO or for Honda. The latest entrant in the category is 2D Photography, a commercial photography firm in Toronto.

“Google Chrome: Justin Bieber” (Google)

After getting up close and personal with Lady Gaga, Google profiles another young singer. Maybe you’ve heard of him?

“Angry Birds Live” (T-Mobile)

The popular mobile game Angry Birds is played out IRL, and hilarity ensues.

“Unleash Your Fingers” (Samsung)

Samsung launches the Galaxy S II in France with the help of Jay Funk, who is, of course, an “Internet Finger Tutting phenomenon,” according to Samsung. Funk can make cubes and butterflies and other stuff come out of his hands with a little CGI help.

“Danny MacAskill – Way Back Home” (Red Bull)

In another long-term hit, Danny MacAskill does some crazy stunts on his bike on a trip from Edinburgh back to his hometown, Dunvegan, in the Isle of Skye in Scotland.

“Ken Block’s Gymkhana THREE, Part 2; Ultimate Playground; l’Autodrome, France” (DC Shoes)

More racing porn on behalf of DC Shoes. Pretty impressive, but can Block drive the car through car-sized holes in cement walls?

“The Google+ project: A quick look” (Google)

You may have heard something about this new social network, Google+. Well, here’s a guide if you haven’t.

“Evian Roller Babies International Version” (Evian)

Those lovable Roller Babies are back, or never left I suppose.

“BMW 1M – Walls – MPowered Performance Part 1″ (BMW)

Racing car videos are the macho equivalent of LOLCats. Here, a BMW 1 Series M Coupe makes its way through cartoon-style car-shaped holes in concrete walls. Professional driver. Do not attempt. Watch Part 2 here.

“Justin Bieber and Usher Happy Birthday Song [Mysto & Pizzi vs. Agent Jackson remix]” (American Cancer Societ)

The Biebs and Usher sing Happy Birthday for all those cancer survivors out there. They must have bought the rights to the song, since anyone who posts themselves singing “Happy Birthday” on YouTube will get their video taken down because of copyright issues.

“The Force” (Volkswagen)

Volkswagen’s oft-parodied Lil’ Vader Super Bowl spot still has legs. It appears to be a good idea to put a young child in your Super Bowl ad.

“The most amazing beat box video ever!!!” (Trace Urban)

French beat box phenomenon EKLIPS performs a four-minute history of hip-hop in a single take. Professional beat boxer. Do not attempt.

“Assassin’s Creed Revelations E3 2011 Trailer [HD]” (UbiSoft)

A big hit in a surefire viral video category: video game previews.

“The X Factor- World Premiere Preview” (Fox)

Simon Cowell gets all soft and fuzzy for his new show, The X Factor. No, just kidding. He’s the same jerk he always was.

“The Man Your Man Could Smell Like” (Old Spice)

The original viral hit from Old Spice got a new lease on life when the brand rolled out a duel between old Old Spice guy Isaiah Mustafa and wannabe Old Spice guy Fabio. Hilarity ensued.

“Dear 16-year-old Me” (David Cornfield Melanoma Fund)

Dear David Cornfield Melanoma Fund: You’re ruining my summer with this effective and heart-rending public service announcement about melanoma.

“Challenge Accepted” (Old Spice)

A hundred or so videos were created during Isaiah Mustafa’s “Hunk Off” with Fabio. This was one of them.

“HUGO Just Different” (Hugo Boss)

It’s a Hugo Boss ad, but it’s just different because Jared Leto is in it.

More About: advertising, MARKETING, viral videos, youtube

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The new document was discussed today at the VidCon conference in Los Angeles, and is part of YouTube’s broader goal to help creators produce high quality content (YouTube’s recent acquisition Next New Networks is the driving force behind this mission).

Of course, YouTube is quick to clarify that while this should be a useful guide, there isn’t anything that’s guaranteed. It’s really just a well thought-out set of best practices — if your content isn’t any good, optimizing the first five seconds of your video isn’t going to be much help. From the first page:

The Creator Playbook is not a collection of rules or guaranteed ‘tricks’ to get more views. Instead, it presents best practices, optimization tips, and suggested strategies for building audience and engagement on YouTube.”

The document is a hefty 70 pages long but isn’t as daunting as you’d think. YouTube has broken each of its miniguides into three sections: Programming & Producing, Publishing & Optimization, Community & Social Media. And each tip within a section gives an at-a-glance overview of how long it will take to implement (the easy ones are five minutes, the harder ones a day or more), which metrics the tip will impact, and how much of an effect content creators should expect.

Some of the topics will be obvious to TechCrunch readers (use Facebook and Twitter a lot!) but it’s unlikely that you’ll already know everything in there. The sections outlining how video metadata can impact your search result rankings is particularly useful — and there’s a checklist at the end you can run through each time you upload a video.

Note that while there’s an entire section dedicated to thumbnail optimization, there’s nothing in there about using a woman’s cleavage as your thumbnail photo, which seems to be a curiously popular strategy on the site.

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Icelanders on Friday delivered what may set the template for other governments: a crowdsourced constitution.

A group of 25 citizens presented a draft of the constitution to Iceland’s parliament. The group, which is made up of ordinary residents, compiled the document online with the help of hundreds of others. The constitution council posted the first draft in April on its website and then let citizens comment via a Facebook Page. The council members are also active on Twitter, post videos of themselves on YouTube and put pictures on Flickr.

Iceland’s original constitution was created in 1944 when the country gained independence from Denmark. The country’s economic collapse in 2008 prompted calls for a rewrite with checks and balances to prevent a repeat of the financial crisis. The draft was due before the end of July. It may be put to a referendum without the input of parliament.

Iceland may be ahead of the curve on using social media to inform its new government, but it is not alone: Earlier this month, volunteers at a series of hackathons at Stanford University created a site where Egyptians could discuss their proposed constitution.

Image courtesy of Flickr, WorldIslandInfo

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Creating a viral video is hard, but the wizards at Red Giant Software have nailed it. With less than $10,000 in their pockets but armed with a great idea and serious filmmaking skills, the company enlisted the help of indie filmmaker Seth Worley to create “Plot Device,” a viral video that topped 540,000 views on Vimeo and YouTube in its first two weeks.

What are they promoting? It’s not immediately evident, but Red Giant Software is a small company that develops visual effects plug-ins, and with each activation of this “Plot Device,” you see a different visual effect included in its Magic Bullet Suite 11 software.

Because they’re marketing to filmmakers, not only did the Red Giant crew need a compelling idea — they needed to execute the effects well enough to impress those who create special effects for a living. So they gambled, rounding up friends, volunteers and a lot of donated equipment to make this mini masterpiece.

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In further proof of the major TV networks’ unease with Hulu, Fox will limit the next-day streaming of its shows to paying customers of approved satellite and cable operators, according to a report. All others will have to wait eight days to see the shows.

Fox, according to The New York Times, may be followed by ABC, which is considering setting a similar limit.

The decision, which affects Fox shows like The Simpsons and Bones, was prompted by “a desire to protect lucrative deals with cable and satellite distributors,” the report says. “Increasingly, distributors are paying monthly fees for Fox programs through retransmission agreements and they dislike the facts that many of the programs are free online.” Hulu Plus customers will still be able to stream the Fox shows a day after they air.

This isn’t the first time that Fox and other backers of Hulu have expressed displeasure with the service. In January, reports surfaced that NBC Universal, News Corp. and Walt Disney were considering pulling their content from Hulu. Created by NBCUniversal, Fox and Disney-ABC in 2007, Hulu was originally created to offset the influence of YouTube and pirated versions of TV shows on the Internet. But since 2008, sales execs at Fox and NBC have complained the site is draining viewers from those networks’ respective websites. The companies are now reportedly in the process of trying to sell Hulu.

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RIL founder Nathan Weiner originally started the company back in August 2007, and he was the only person working on it up until early this year — during which time he built out the web product, multiple mobile applications, and a userbase of millions. As the service took off Weiner moved out to Silicon Valley, where he received multiple acquisition offers, but decided to keep the company independent. He’s also started growing the team, which is up to five.

Weiner wants RIL to “do for web content what Tivo did for TV content”, in the sense that it lets them consume what they want, when they want it. It also has a similar mission to Dropbox: it wants to give you access to that content on any of your devices, be it a phone, tablet, television, or computer, without having to think about where you saved what.

At this point Read It Later obviously has a focus on written content, but people have already started using it to bookmark other things — in fact, the number one most saved URL on Read It Later is YouTube.

Weiner says that the service currently has a total of 3.5 million registered users (though that includes users who aren’t active). And it’s showing strong growth, with 10,000 downloads per day and over 250 applications (including Twitter’s official app) that have integrated the RIL API (you can see a directory of these apps here).

Of course, Read It Later isn’t the only service that lets you sync bookmarks between devices.  Instapaper gets a lot of attention from the tech press (in part because it’s run by Tumblr’s former lead developer Marco Arment, and in part because it’s very well done). But Weiner says that Read It Later actually started before Instapaper and that its install base is around twice as large. He also points out that Instapaper caters primarily to users on iOS (though it does have an API, so there are apps available for other platforms).

And then there’s Apple, which launched a feature called ‘Reading List’ in the latest version of Safari that includes a lot of the same functionality. Weiner isn’t concerned about this — he says that Apple users are siloed, and that the number of RIL users who have both iOS devices are using Safari make up less than 1% of users.

Crunchbase

READ IT LATER

Company:
READ IT LATER

Website:
http://readitlater.com

Launch Date:
6/8/2007

Read It Later is a service that lets you save what you find on the web to watch and read on any device, anytime.

Founded in August 2007 by Nate…

Learn more

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The company, called Pittsburgh Pattern Recognition, or PittPatt, is run by three “image analysis” and “pattern recognition” specialists with PhD’s from Carnegie Mellon University, according to its site. Terms of the deal weren’t disclosed.

A statement on PittPatt’s site said on Friday that “computer vision technology is already at the core of many existing products” at Google, including Image Search, YouTube and Picasa, “so it’s a natural fit to join Google and bring the benefits of our research and technology to a wider audience. We will continue to tap the potential of computer vision in applications that range from simple photo organization to complex video and mobile applications.”

A Google spokesman said PittPatt developed “innovative technology” in the area of computer vision and that its research “can benefit our users in many ways,” without elaborating.

Regarding face recognition, the spokesman said, “We’ve said that we won’t add face recognition to our apps or product features unless we have strong privacy protections in place, and that’s still the case.”

Google has said it built facial recognition technology for smartphones into a product known as Google Goggles, but withheld it. “As far as I know, it’s the only technology that Google built and after looking at it, we decided to stop,” said Google Chairman Eric Schmidt last month at a conference. “People could use this stuff in a very, very bad way as well as in a good way.”

During its annual developer conference in May, Google showed off something called “Virtual Camera Operator,” which uses computer-vision technology to stabilize mobile video chats by following a person’s head movements and to determine who is speaking during a multi-person video conference so that the camera would automatically focus on the speaker.

It also recently launched Google+, a social network that lets people share and store photos, among other things. Rival Facebook has face-recognition technology to identify people in photos, which has raised concerns from privacy advocates. The technology, first introduced last year, was designed to help Facebook users easily identify and mark, or “tag,” friends in photos as they upload them to the social-networking site.

“If for any reason someone doesn’t want their name to be suggested” for tagging, “they can disable the feature in their Privacy Settings,” Facebook has said.

PittPatt’s software “accurately counts the number of people viewed by a video camera” and “it can automatically generate reports measuring the presence and movement of people over extended periods of time,” according to a cached version of its website.

Some of the “practical applications” of the technology include measuring “the effectiveness of digital signage, advertising, kiosks and narrowcasting”; “customer traffic flow,” or gathering “insight into customer behavior and shopping patterns; “security-related matters” such as being able to send alerts when the PittPatt software detects a face that isn’t in its database.

PittPatt offered a tool for people to “integrate face finding and tracking into your own product,” and in 2007 it partnered with General Electric to develop an “intelligent security camera system,” the site said. The GE system “will obtain high resolution facial imagery using a motorized pan-tilt-zoom camera that will track and zoom in on faces that enter the field of view,” according to the site.

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What can you use the application for?


GodTube is a site focused on both video clips and religious beliefs. The site lists a variety of videos with a mostly Christian focus. Users can choose categories including comedy videos, cute videos, Spanish videos, educational videos, movies, inspirational videos, music videos, ministry videos and Christian videos. A simple search tool is available to help users find videos by keyword. The site is very similar to YouTube, with each video presented to the left of a list of suggested clips and above a description and video sharing tools. Users can also post comments to videos and read comments posted by others. Users can also see how many views a clip has received as well as how many Facebook “likes” and its star rating. GodTube also presents featured ministry videos as well as featured videos for each category listed on the site.

What is the history and popularity of the application?


GodTube was founded by Chris Wyatt. The website was intended to provide users with a faith based alternative to sites like YouTube. The company is currently based in Plano, Texas and includes CEO Wyatt. GodTube received funding in May of 2008. The site currently offers Christians another resource to share information and explore video clips posted by churches and other organizations.

What are the differences to other apps?


In terms of pure features, GodTube does not offer anything unique or original. The site works very much like YouTube. What makes GodTube slightly different is the site’s focus on the Christian faith. Users who prefer religious videos can search GodTube to find a better offering than they might on a more general video sharing website.

How does the application look and feel to use?


The GodTube homepage uses a red and black color scheme that gives it a bit of personality against a white background. The homepage also features popular videos and category listings in black. Each video page looks extremely similar to YouTube video pages, with user comments listed at the bottom and suggested videos along the right hand side. The site also contains advertisements which do not ruin the experience, but do seem to add clutter to some of the pages.

How does the registration process work?


GodTube visitors are not required to sign up to search for and view video clips. User who would like to upload videos or access all of the site’s features are asked to register. To get started, users can click the dark blue “Create Account” link along the right hand side (below the top banner advertisement). The following page gives the user access to the registration form. The form asks for a username, password, email address, first and last name, date of birth and gender. The user must also check both of the boxes at the bottom of the form to confirm that they agree to the GodTube terms and conditions and to verify that the information they submitted is accurate.

What does it cost to use the application?


Much like YouTube, GodTube provides users access to its video clips for free. There are no subscription fees required to create an account. The user can browse as often as they like. The site does not require any purchases or other fees to maintain an account.

Who would you recommend the application to?


GodTube.com is intended entirely for Christians. The website offers an alternative for users who prefer faith based videos. Although the site also contains comedy videos and other category options, it retains a primarily faith based focus throughout.

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The death of Amy Winehouse was a shock to us all, and we mourn the loss of her free spirit and original talent. While her rise to stardom was well-documented on YouTube, so was her fall from grace.

This video shows her last public appearance, which was at the iTunes Festival, where she appeared on stage to help promote her protégé and goddaughter Dionne Bromfield’s new album.

Winehouse had canceled a European tour following a meltdown last month. She had withdrawn from all scheduled performances and her spokesperson said she would be given “as long as it takes” to recover. According to the Mail Online, police treated her death as “unexplained.”

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The death of Amy Winehouse was a shock to us all, and we mourn the loss of her free spirit and original talent. While her rise to stardom was well-documented on YouTube, so was her fall from grace.

This video shows her last public appearance, which was at the iTunes Festival, where she appeared on stage to help promote her protégé and goddaughter Dionne Bromfield’s new album.

Winehouse had canceled a European tour following a meltdown last month. She had withdrawn from all scheduled performances and her spokesperson said she would be given “as long as it takes” to recover. According to the Mail Online, police treated her death as “unexplained.”

More About: amy winehouse, death, last performance, last video, youtube

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Welcome back to the Python from Scratch series. In the previous lesson, we learned how to use variables and control structures to store and manipulate data. Be sure to review it if you need a refresher!

Video Tutorial

Transcript

In today’s tutorial, we’re going to be looking at functions – what they are, how they work, and how to make your own. We’re also going to be reviewing some of the built-in functions, and how to use them effectively. Finally, we’re going to have a look at creating and importing modules.

Functions – Writing your Own

Functions are an important step to cover, when introducing additional complexity into your programming. If a variable is a named container for data, then a function is a named container for a block of code that can be executed on demand. This is useful if you have a program that executes a certain operation lots of times. Instead of copying and pasting the code to do that operation each section where it’s needed, you can simply write one single function to do it for you.

A function is a named container for a block of code.

There are two types of functions: the ones that you write yourself and include in your code, and the ones that are included in Python natively, which carry out common procedures, such as converting an integer to a string, or finding the length of a string.

We’re going to look at writing a simple function now, and demonstrate how it can be useful in the real world code. Then, we’ll have a look at some of the most important built-in functions.

A simple Example

Let’s imagine that we want to make a script for a shopping cart that takes the cost of all the items in your cart, and then adds them together to return a total cost. To write a function that would take two costs, add them up, and then print out the output, we might do something like:

	#our two costs to add up
	cost1 = 15
	cost2 = 20

	def sumCart():
		totalCost = cost1 + cost2
		print totalCost

	sumCart()

To define the function, we need to use the ‘def‘ keyword, and then the name of the function. Next, we type two parentheses (we’ll come back to those later), and then a colon. After that, all of the code that we want to be encased within the function should be indented, just as with if, while and for loops.

To make the code in the function run, we type the name of the function, followed by the two parentheses again. If you run this code, you’ll see it print out ’35′, which is the correct output.

Arguments

That’s great, but at the moment, our functions are a bit rigid – everything about the function is hard-coded into them. For example, let’ say we want to use the sumCart function somewhere else, in a different part of the program, but instead of adding cost1 and cost2 together, we want to add two other costs together that were held in different variables. We’d have to write a whole new function, even though that new function would be exactly the same as the current one, with the names of the variables swapped around – that hardly seems like an efficient solution.

To solve this issue, we use ‘arguments’, and that’s what the parentheses are for. An argument is a way of passing data into a function when we don’t know which variable or variables that data is going to be in. If that’s confusing, let’s take the example that I just referenced. We’ll add two more costs: cost3 and cost4.

Now, we’re going to add two arguments for the two items that we want to add up. Arguments are defined inside the parentheses, and each argument is given a name, with a comma separating each. An argument acts as a temporary reference to the data that you passed in while the function is running.

	cost1 = 15
	cost2 = 20
	cost3 = 5
	cost4 = 10

	def sumCart(item1, item2):
		totalCost = item1 + item2
		print totalCost

	sumCart(cost1, cost2)

When we call the sumCart function, the two variables that we’ve passed in (cost1 and cost2) are put into the arguments item1 and item2. This always happens in the same order you define the arguments – in other words, the first variable you pass in is assigned to the first argument, the second to the second argument, and so on for as many arguments as your function takes.

What actually happens when the function is run is that those two arguments are converted into local variables and are assigned the values of the variables that you pass into the function when you call it – in this case the value of cost1 is put into the local variable item1, and the value of cost2 is put into the local variable item2. This means you can easily use them inside the function.

Another way you could look at it is, when you pass a variable as an argument, everywhere that that argument’s name appears in the function, it is replaced with the variable you passed in. So, in this example, everywhere that item1 is written inside the function, it’s replaced with cost1, and the same with item2 and cost2.

To prove that you can pass any numbers you want, if you run this code, you should now receive the sum of cost3 and cost4:

	cost1 = 15
	cost2 = 20
	cost3 = 5
	cost4 = 10

	def sumCart(item1, item2):
		totalCost = item1 + item2
		print totalCost

	sumCart(cost3, cost4)

Argument Defaults

Note that a function can accept any number of arguments, but remember: when you call the function, you have to pass it the same number of arguments as you defined, otherwise you will receive an error. There is one way around this: you can define a default value for any argument, which is used in the cases when you don’t supply a value.

Considering our current code, let’s imagine that we want the second item to cost 5 if we don’t give the function a different value. It’s not a likely scenario, but it’ll demonstrate the concept.

	cost1 = 15
	cost2 = 20
	cost3 = 5
	cost4 = 10

	def sumCart(item1, item2 = 5):
		totalCost = item1 + item2
		print totalCost

	sumCart(cost1)
	sumCart(cost3, cost4)

If we run this code, you’ll see that, in the first call, the output is 20, which is indeed (cost1 + 5). This doesn’t, however, affect the behavior when both arguments are supplied.

Returning values

There’s one final feature of functions that we’re going to review today: returning values. We’ve learned how to make a function that doesn’t mind what inputs it takes, but what if we wanted to store the answer to ‘totalCost’ in a variable rather than print it out? Perhaps what we want to do is work out the cost of the first two items, and store it in one variable, then do the same with the second two items and store that answer in a second variable. With the current layout of our function, we couldn’t do that in a readable and easy to understand way.

Just like the way we can pass arguments into a function so that we don’t have to hard-code where the data is coming from, we can do the same with the output. I’ll show you with an example – in our previous function, I’m going to replace the word ‘print’ with the word ‘return’:

	cost1 = 15
	cost2 = 20
	cost3 = 5
	cost4 = 10

	def sumCart(item1, item2):
		totalCost = item1 + item2
		return totalCost

	cart1 = sumCart(cost1, cost2)
	cart2 = sumCart(cost3, cost4)

	print cart1
	print cart2

Obviously, the function is no longer going to print out the answer for us – what it’s going to do instead is pass back the value of the variable totalCost to wherever we called the function from. That way, we can use the answer in whatever context we need to. Now, in our previous program, that wouldn’t be particularly useful, because we didn’t specify anywhere to store it, so I’ve also changed the way we call the function.

We need to provide Python with a variable in which to store the answer, and then we’re simply going to set that variable equal to our statement calling the function. When the function returns a value, that value will now be stored in the variable we specified.

Functions – Built-in

We’ve learned how to make our own functions, and how to use them, but there are some operations that are carried out often enough that Python has included them for use in any program. The way you call them is exactly the same as calling your own, but you don’t have to define them first. We’re going to have a brief look at the most important ones now, but be sure be have a look at the Python documentation because there are loads of useful functions that are available for use, which we don’t have time to cover right now.

Refer to the Python documentation for a list of all built-in functions.

str()

First, let’s look at one of the most useful functions in Python: the string conversion function. There are many times in scripting when you have a variable that contains a number, or some other type of data, but you need to convert that value to a string in order to do something with it – normally to print it out onto the screen.

Let’s say we have a number in a variable, and that we want to print it out, with the message ‘The number is ‘ and then the number. If we write:

	number = 10
	print 'The number is ' + number

…then we’re going to encounter an error, because what you’re asking Python to do is to add a number and a string together – which doesn’t really make a whole lot of sense. What we need to do is to convert the number 10 into the string 10. If we do that, Python will understand that what we’re trying to do is not find a sum, but instead concatenate the two strings into one.

This is where the str function comes in. It accepts a value, and returns a string to represent it. In the case you pass it a number, it will simply return the number but in string format.

	number = 10
	print 'The number is ' + str(number)

Now that we’ve encased the number in a string conversion function, the code runs perfectly. The str function doesn’t have to take a number though – it can also take other values, such as a Boolean:

	bool = True
	print 'The value is ' + str(bool)

The str() function finds the closest string match it can find for the value of ‘true’ and returns it, meaning that we can output it nicely.

len()

Another common task for strings is to be able to find the length of them, and, again, Python has a built in function for this. Let’s take the string ‘Hello World’ and try to find its length. To do this, we’re going to need the built-in len() function, which stands for length. All we need to do is pass it the string we want to use, and it will return the number of characters in it:

	string = 'Hello World'
	print len(string)

The len() function is capable of more than this, though. What it actually does is count the number of items in the object you give it – if you give it a string then that’s the number of characters, but you can also give it a list or a tuple, for example, and it will return the amount of items in that particular object.

int()

Moving on, often you are given a number like 10.6 or 3.896, which is not an integer, but you need an integer from them. The built-in function to convert to an integer is called int(), and it works fairly predictably. The function will return the integer conversion of that number. Note that this function does NOT round the input to the nearest integer – it very simply throws away anything after the decimal point and returns the number to you. So the input of 10.6 will return 10, NOT 11. Similarly, 3.25 would return 3.

	number = 10.6
	print int(number)

The int function can also convert a string to an int data type. For example, given this, the output would still be 10:

	number = '10'
	print int(number)

However, be careful, because, when it is converting from a string to an integer, int() will NOT deal with decimal places. If you provide it:

	number = '10.6'
	print int(number)

Then it will throw an error, because the input wasn’t an integer, so it didn’t know how to handle it.

range()

Finally, we’re going to quickly look at the range() function; it comes up surprisingly often when you start doing more complex tasks in Python, and, while it might not seem massively useful at the moment, it’s worth having a look at and getting to know how it works. Range is a function that you use to create a list of numbers following a certain pattern. The simplest example is that perhaps you need a list containing all of the numbers 0 to 10. Instead of typing them out manually, you can use the range function to do it in one line.

Range accepts an integer as the parameter, and, in this case, we’ll pass it 11. The function thens starts at zero, and makes a list counting upwards until it hits one less than the number you put in. So here, if we put in 11, it will store the numbers 0 – 10 in the list numbers:

	numbers = range(11)
	print(numbers)

What if we wanted to print the numbers five to ten instead? Well, optionally, we can include another argument for the starting number, so this will print the numbers five to ten:

	numbers = range(5, 11)
	print(numbers)

Lastly, what if we wanted to print only the odd numbers under 10? Well, range accepts a third value, which is the amount to go up each step. So if we start at 1, set the step to two and the upper limit to 11, we should end up with all the odd numbers under ten:

	numbers = range(1, 11, 2)
	print(numbers)

As a final note, any of these numbers can be negative as well, so if we wanted to count DOWN from 10 to 1 instead of up, we could set the step to be negative 1, the starting value to 10 and the limit to 0, like so:

	numbers = range(10, 0, -1)
	print(numbers)

Note that range will only deal with integers, so make sure that you don’t give it any values that aren’t integers or you’ll throw an error.

Modules – Creating your Own

Alright, we’ve now covered functions; let’s move on to the second topic of today’s lesson: modules. If functions are groups of code, then modules are groups of functions. There’s more to them, but that’s a good way of thinking about them for now.

As we discussed earlier, you can’t make a complex program without sorting code into functions, and as your program continues to grow further, even they become unwieldy. You have to sort them into another hierarchical level. These are modules. So we can summarize them as a structural and organizational tool for our code.

Modules are quite easy to create. They are simply Python files, like your regular scripts. To create a module, write one or more functions in a text file, then save it with a .py extension. Let’s do that now with an example. Open up a new file your text editor or IDE, and make a function. I’m going to continue with the example of a shopping cart from earlier and make a function to calculate tax on the products.

Create a new file in your IDE or text editor and let’s create a function for calculating tax on a product.

	def addTax(price, tax):
		newPrice = price / 100 * (100 + tax)
		return newPrice

If we save this file with a .py extension in the same directory as our other script, we can use it as a module! It’s important to give it a descriptive name so you know what it does when you come back later, so call this one finance.py

Importing modules

To use modules, we can use either the import or the from keyword. import is the simplest and most common, so let’s try that first. You then specify the name of the module, which is simply the filename, without the .py extension. For example, with our finance module in the same folder as our script, we could write:

import finance

…and we would have access to all the functions in the script. We can then call them just as we did before. You can also use the from keyword, which allows you to select specific functions from the library, if you know which ones you require beforehand. For a module that has hundreds of functions, this is recommended – it saves loading time on functions that aren’t even being used.

from finance import addTax

You can import several by separating their names with commas.

from finance import addTax, calculateDiscount

And you can even use the asterisk wildcard to import everything.

from finance import *

After importing the module, to use the functions contained within it, you use the module name, followed by a dot, and then the function name.

	import finance
	print finance.addTax(100, 5)

This should result in 105 when the script is run. A simple result, but it means you’ve got a working function!

Built-in Modules

There are plenty of built in modules, just as there are with built in functions. This is where Python really excels! It takes what’s called the “batteries included” approach.

Because Python has such an extensive range of built-in modules, there’s no way to cover them all in one lesson. Some are quite obscure, and there’s no point teaching a load of information you might never have a use for. Instead, let’s cover several of the most useful ones.

• random
• math
• os
• datetime
• urllib2

random

A good one to start with is random , because it’s easy to understand and useful in most scripts you’ll write. As you’d expect, this module lets you generate random numbers. For example, when using Python to create a website, they can be used in making your password database more secure or powering a random page feature. If we wanted a random integer, we can use the randint function, like so:

	import random
	print random.randint(0, 5)

This will output either 1, 2, 3, 4 or 5. Randint accepts exactly two parameters: a lowest and a highest number. As you can see, it includes the highest number but goes from 1 above the lowest number. If you want a random floating point number, you can use the random function:

	import random
	random.random()

…which outputs a random number between 0 and 1, to a load of decimal places. If you want a larger number, you can multiply it. For example, a random number between 0 and 100:

	import random
	random.random() * 100

The random module also has a function for choosing a random element from a set such as a list, called choice.

	import random
	myList = [1, 8, True, 77, "Lorem", 482, "Ipsum"]
	random.choice(myList)

math

The math module provides access to mathematical constants and functions.

	import math

	math.pi #Pi, 3.14...
	math.e  #Euler's number, 2.71...

	math.degrees(2)  #2 radians = 114.59 degreees
	math.radians(60) #60 degrees = 1.04 radians

	math.sin(2)    #Sine of 2 radians
	math.cos(0.5)  #Cosine of 0.5 radians
	math.tan(0.23) #Tangent of 0.23 radians

	math.factorial(5) #1 * 2 * 3 * 4 * 5 = 120
	math.sqrt(49)   #Square root of 49 = 7

There are lots more functions in the module, but these are some of the most useful. You can find a full list here.

datetime

If you need to work with dates and times, then the datetime module is your friend. This one is a very useful one to know about for web development. If you’re making an website with comments, or a blog, then you’ll probably be displaying their age, or the time they were created.

Let’s import the module as usual:

	import datetime

For convenience, you can also import the date and the time components separately, so you don’t have to type as much later.

	import datetime
	from datetime import date
	import time

Let’s have a look at some of the functions it provides:

	time.time() #Returns the number of seconds since the Unix Epoch, January 1st 1970

	date.fromtimestamp(123456789)   #Converts a number of seconds to a date object
	date.fromtimestamp(time.time()) #We can combine the two to get an object representing the current time

	date.fromordinal(10000) #Returns the date a given number of days since January 1st in the Year 1 - 28th of May 0018 in this case

There are some useful functions for converting dates into useable strings. strftime allows you to format a string based on special characters preceded by a percent symbol. %d represents day, for example.

	currentDate = date.fromtimestamp(time.time()) #Create a variable representing the time now
	currentDate.strftime("%d/%m/%y") #Format the date like DD/MM/YY - in this case 09/07/11

	currentDate.isoformat() #Format as an ISO standard date - in this case 2011-07-09

os

The next module we’re looking at is os, which provides functions that allow you to interface with the underlying operating system that Python is running on – be that Windows, Mac or Linux. We’ll focus on the path submodule. It allows you to manipulate and find the properties of files and folders on the system, so it’s the most useful for web development. You’ll often need to manage files, for example user uploads.

	from os import path

	path.exists("/Users/Giles") #Checks if the directory exists, in my case it's True
	path.exists("/Users/Bob")   #False this time

	from os import path
	path.getatime("/Users") #Get the last time the given directory was accessed as a timestamp
	path.getmtime("/Users") #Get the last time the given directory was modified as a timestamp

These timestamps can be converted to useable strings using the datetime module – you can see how you can combine modules.

	from os import path
	path.getsize("/Users/Giles/Desktop/boot") #Returns the size of a file in bytes - for this file it was 314400 bytes, or 314kb

The last function in the os module we’re going to look at is join. It combines two paths into one. You might be thinking: “Why can’t I just concatenate the strings?”, but it’s not as simple as that. On Windows, the path delimiter is a backslash, on Mac and Linux it’s a forward slash. This module alleviates problems like that and makes sure your Pythons scripts work on any system.

	path.join("C:", "Users") #Returns "C:/Users"

urllib2

To finish our tour of Python’s standard library, we’re going to have a brief look at urllib2. This module lets you interface with the web, so it’s obviously quite relevant to us. The most useful function it provides is urlopen, which downloads a page.

You use it as follows:

	import urllib2
	urllib2.urlopen("http://net.tutsplus.com")

You can obviously swap the URL string for any site. This will download the HTML content of the page. This won’t return a string though, so we need to read the data to get that out:

	import urllib2
	urllib2.urlopen("http://net.tutsplus.com").read(100)

This will return the first 100 characters of the HTML source of Nettuts+. Once you have this data, you can sort through it and extract the necessary bits that you require.

Final Tips

If your module is in a different directory than your script, it’s a bit trickier to import them. You have to create a file that tells Python the folder is a package. For example, if you have a folder, called subdirectory, in the same folder as your script, and then your module within that subdirectory, you would have to create a file called __init__.py in the same folder as the module. This file can be empty. Then, from your script, you’d import it:

%review it if you need a refresher!

Video Tutorial

Transcript

In today’s tutorial, we’re going to be looking at functions – what they are, how they work, and how to make your own. We’re also going to be reviewing some of the built-in functions, and how to use them effectively. Finally, we’re going to have a look at creating and importing modules.

Functions – Writing your Own

Functions are an important step to cover, when introducing additional complexity into your programming. If a variable is a named container for data, then a function is a named container for a block of code that can be executed on demand. This is useful if you have a program that executes a certain operation lots of times. Instead of copying and pasting the code to do that operation each section where it’s needed, you can simply write one single function to do it for you.

A function is a named container for a block of code.

There are two types of functions: the ones that you write yourself and include in your code, and the ones that are included in Python natively, which carry out common procedures, such as converting an integer to a string, or finding the length of a string.

We’re going to look at writing a simple function now, and demonstrate how it can be useful in the real world code. Then, we’ll have a look at some of the most important built-in functions.

A simple Example

Let’s imagine that we want to make a script for a shopping cart that takes the cost of all the items in your cart, and then adds them together to return a total cost. To write a function that would take two costs, add them up, and then print out the output, we might do something like:

	#our two costs to add up
	cost1 = 15
	cost2 = 20

	def sumCart():
		totalCost = cost1 + cost2
		print totalCost

	sumCart()

To define the function, we need to use the ‘def‘ keyword, and then the name of the function. Next, we type two parentheses (we’ll come back to those later), and then a colon. After that, all of the code that we w

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What can you use the application for?


Animoto lets users design unique video slideshows with their personal photographs. The application syncs with popular sites like Flickr, Facebook, PhotoBucket, Picasa and SmugMug. The user can select from a list of music provided by Animoto or upload their own MP3 to accompany their slide show. Completed slide shows can be easily shared on social networks and photo sites including Facebook, Tumblr, PhotoBucket, Flickr, My Space, Twitter, YouTube and Picasa. The user’s slideshow can be shown in different resolutions as well, including 480p or web friendly 360p clips. Animoto also provides user with access to a cutting edge cinematic artificial intelligence. The user selects images, videos and music and the application puts them together just like a director would. Each video is white labeled so the user can share them with clients or customers without the Animoto logo appearing on the video or embedded player.

What is the history and popularity of the application?


Animoto was founded in August of 2006 by Tom Clifton, Jason Hsiao and Stevie Clifton. The company is headquartered in New York City with locations in San Francisco, California. Animoto currently consists of over 50 employees, including Creative Director Tom Clifton, President Hsiao, CTO Stevie Clifton, Advisor Steve Jang, UX Designer Chris Korhonen and board members Brad Jefferson, Matt McIlwain and Ben Spero.

What are the differences to other apps?


Animoto offers users a number of cutting edge features to create eye-catching, captivating photo slide shows. The user can add unique effects, add their own music or use music in the Animoto library and easily share their completed slide show on social networks. The cinematic artificial intelligence feature is by far one of the most original aspects of Animoto.

How does the application look and feel to use?


Animoto welcomes users with a large, colorful image that makes up the entire background. The dark header contains the stylish Animoto logo along with three white links to help the user learn more or sig up. The slide show can contain many elements, including still photos, videos and unique transitional elements as well as text to introduce each image or provide a short caption. The site uses hints of blue and red against a primarily dark background to create an appealing contrast throughout.

How does the registration process work?


New Animoto users are given two account options. The first is to click the blue and white “Sign In with Facebook” button found in the upper, right hand corner of the page. Users who prefer to create a brand new account can do so by clicking the blue “Sign Up” link found just to the left of the Facebook button. The following page asks the user to select their preferred membership plan to continue. After doing so, the user is asked to provide an email address, first and last name, password, gender and date of birth.

What does it cost to use the application?


Animoto offers users four account options to choose from. The Lite account is available for free and includes unlimited videos, a 30 second max length for videos and access to video greetings. The Plus account costs around $5 per month or around $30 per year and allows full length videos, downloadable slide shows and 480p videos for an extra $3 and 720p HD videos for an extra $6. The Pro account costs just under $40 per month or around $250 per year and include unlimited 480p and 720p videos, no Animoto branding, end of video button access, 1,000 tracks of licensed music, exclusive video styles, commercial license and priority level support. The Reseller account costs around $500 per year and includes the reseller license.

Who would you recommend the application to?


Animoto is a great tool for anyone who would like to design a slide show using images and videos. The account options vary so there is something for casual users as well as professionals who would like to resell the content they create.

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If you are looking for a thematic and original set of social bookmarking icons, here comes an option for you.

Social Lego is a set of 20 icons, built exclusively for WRD readers by Iconshock, that has a lego-like texture and includes the items for the most popular social services like Facebook, Twitter, Google+, Youtube and much more.

The set comes as .PNG and .AI vector formats where you can create any size and modify the easily.

It is free to be used in both personal and commercial projects (and can not be redistributed).

P.S. If you share this icon set in your website/blog, please link to this post rather than the download link. Thanks very much for that.

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Each day, Mashable highlights one noteworthy YouTube video. Check out all our viral video picks.

It’s been a while since we’ve had some Gaga up on Mashable. Well, quit your crying, Little Monsters, because a “Born This Way” parody recently hit the web featuring none other than the X-Men.

This vid, which was created by the folks at The Warp Zone on YouTube, is a more elaborate version of an acoustic reinvention of the song, inspired by the film X-Men: First Class.

Naturally, this isn’t the first parody of Lady Gaga’s jam — Weird Al Yankovic famously featured a tune called “Perform This Way” on his album, Alpocalypse.

Which Gaga satire has been your favorite?

More About: Film, Lady Gaga, music, video, viral video, viral-video-of-day, x-men, youtube

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Online payment service WePay has unveiled a new merchant feature that makes it easier for small businesses to set up their own online stores.

The new WePay Stores aren’t designed to replace more advanced ecommerce software solutions like Zencart or Magento. Instead, WePay Stores are best-suited for home business and small stores that only have, at most, a few dozen items to sell. WePay has streamlined the process of getting items onto the market.

WePay Stores don’t require a merchant account and the user doesn’t need any programming knowledge to set it up. And because the system is powered by WePay, it doesn’t have any setup fees — it takes its cut from the transactions.

The feature that will definitely get the most attention though is embedding. With just a few lines of code, you can stick your WePay Store on your website or blog. This is exactly what Startup Tees did with its website.

One of the disadvantages of WePay Stores is that they lack the depth of customization options. For instance, making subtle color and design changes requires CSS knowledge, though WePay co-founder and CEO Bill Clerico says that it will add more customization options to its ecommerce platform over time.

The WePay Stores are part of the company’s broader strategy to be simpler and easier to use than its biggest competitor, PayPal. The startup has raised approximately $10 million in funding from Dave McClure, SV Angel, Y Combinator, Highland Capital Partners, August Capital, YouTube co-founder Steve Chen and, interestingly, PayPal co-founder Max Levchin.

<img src="http://7.mshcdn.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/07/wepay-store-640.jpg".

More About: Onlien store, paypal, wepay

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The New York City startup Pixable has built apps (for Web and for mobile devices) to improve the way in which we consume the photo feed from Facebook. Pixable makes it easier to view friends’ photos, listing them by friend but also by category. You can see, for example, new profile pics, most popular pics of the month, photos from family, as well as photos that are popular on Flickr and Instagram.

And now Pixable has added a new category and a new media type: videos. Pixable’s categories distinguish between videos that friends have uploaded themselves (home movies 2.0, if you will) and those that they’ve shared (from YouTube and the like).

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A Better Media Browsing Experience

By adding video content, Pixable steps into the ring with a number of other startups who are trying to improve the browsing experience – particularly on tablet devices – for this sort of content, including ShowYou, which we’ve covered in the past.

As it stands, Pixable’s video offerings are only available via its Web app, not on its iPad or iPhone apps yet, although the startup is working on that. Pixable says it also plans to add better categorization for video content, to match what it offers for photos.

Pixable’s competition may not be just other photo- and video-sharing startups, as Techcrunch’s MG Siegler contends that Facebook itself may be launching a better photo-sharing app soon. For its part, Pixable says it still hopes to become the Web’s “social photo aggregator.”

Discuss

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FOAF (an acronym of Friend of a friend) is a machine-readable ontology describing persons, their activities and their relations to other people and objects. Anyone can use FOAF to describe him or herself. FOAF allows groups of people to describe social networks without the need for a centralised database (via Wikipedia).

Foafpress is an open source PHP web application and presentation engine for RDF data stored in files.

It makes aggregating and publishing data from multiple web sources via Linked Data possible.

The application can read RDFXML, Turtle + N-Triple files and supports automatic content negotiation, currently for RDFXML, Turtle, N-Triple, HTML and RSS.

There are ready-to-use templates and controllers for foaf:Person and foaf:Group.

It can create a merged activity stream from Atom/RSS feed resources, render Twitter and Identi.ca statuses including @account, URLs and #hashtag links and has icons for ~35 social websites (like Twitter, Youtube, Facebook).

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Already using Google+? Follow Mashable News for the latest about the platform’s new features, tips and tricks as well as our top social media and technology updates.

Google+ continues to set records as the fastest-growing social network in history, but Google’s social juggernaut is beginning to show signs that it’s losing steam.

Ancestry.com co-founder Paul Allen (not to be confused with the Microsoft co-founder of the same name) posted his most recent analysis of Google+’s growth on his Google+ account Tuesday. According to his analysis, the search giant’s Facebook competitor will likely reach 18 million users by the end of Tuesday, but its growth rate has dropped by 50% from its peak.

“Last week we saw two days where more than 2 million signed up in a single day,” Allen said in his post. “If that rate had continued, Google+ would have reached 20 million users by last Sunday night. But the last four days have averaged only 948,000 new users, and yesterday the site added only 763,000. Yesterday’s growth of 4.47% was the slowest viral growth since Google opened up invites back on July 6.”

SEE ALSO: GOOGLE+: THE COMPLETE GUIDE | VIDEOS | REVIEW

Why is Google+’s growth slowing down? Google Trends indicates that the buzz around Google+ has died down some, which is natural for any major news item. Allen makes the important point that Google+ hasn’t been promoted by any of its other properties and that the social network is still invite-only. Once Google+ is promoted on YouTube or on Google.com, its growth may simply skyrocket.

Allen estimated that Google+ hit the 10 million user mark sometime on July 12 or 13. Google CEO Larry Page confirmed that Google+ had more than 10 million users during an investor earnings call on July 14. Its most followed user, Mark Zuckerberg, now has more than 250,000 followers, despite not posting a single public item on his Google+ account.

Graph via Paul Allen’s Google+ page

More About: Google, Google Plus, social networking

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With Facebook continuing to show weak consumer satisfaction numbers, the obvious question is what this means for Google Plus. “What we do know is that Google is one of the highest-scoring companies in the ACSI and Facebook is one of the lowest,” said Larry Freed, president and CEO of survey partner ForeSee Results. “An existing dominance of market share like Facebook has is no longer a safety net for a company that is not providing a superior customer experience.”

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The survey didn’t put Twitter into its own category, instead lumping together “all other social sites” – a category that declined substantially in consumer satisfaction. Facebook, though in last place in its category, actually climbed year over year from 64% to 66%.

Scott Ellison, analyst firm IDC’s VP of Mobile & Consumer Connected Platforms, put it this way, “Social is deceivingly fluid and Google+ is proving that. There are still enormous social app opportunities, especially apps that are interest and function specific.”

No qualitative or detailed information was made available concerning this dissatisfaction with Facebook, so it’s hard to know what it all means. It’s also worth noting that the clear majority of people remain satisfied by Facebook. It’s also worth noting that Facebook has changed the lives of hundreds of millions of people in a historically unprecedented way.

Finally, it’s worth noting that surveys are only questions asked of real people – so you have to take them with a grain of salt.

Below: From the popular if depressing blog Failbook.

Discuss

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With Facebook continuing to show weak consumer satisfaction numbers, the obvious question is what this means for Google Plus. “What we do know is that Google is one of the highest-scoring companies in the ACSI and Facebook is one of the lowest,” said Larry Freed, president and CEO of survey partner ForeSee Results. “An existing dominance of market share like Facebook has is no longer a safety net for a company that is not providing a superior customer experience.”

Sponsor

The survey didn’t put Twitter into its own category, instead lumping together “all other social sites” – a category that declined substantially in consumer satisfaction. Facebook, though in last place in its category, actually climbed year over year from 64% to 66%.

Scott Ellison, analyst firm IDC’s VP of Mobile & Consumer Connected Platforms, put it this way, “Social is deceivingly fluid and Google+ is proving that. There are still enormous social app opportunities, especially apps that are interest and function specific.”

No qualitative or detailed information was made available concerning this dissatisfaction with Facebook, so it’s hard to know what it all means. It’s also worth noting that the clear majority of people remain satisfied by Facebook. It’s also worth noting that Facebook has changed the lives of hundreds of millions of people in a historically unprecedented way.

Finally, it’s worth noting that surveys are only questions asked of real people – so you have to take them with a grain of salt.

Below: From the popular if depressing blog Failbook.

Discuss

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In the months since TED Prize Winner JR’s global participatory art project was announced, thousands of photos have been uploaded and more than 150 huge posters sent out as the French artist looks to transform urban landscapes with portraits.

Now, JR is starting to document what he calls the Inside Out Project through video from people around the world that have taken to his call to action and pasted their portraits in the streets.

The YouTube channel, launched Thursday at TED Global in Edinburgh, Scotland, also includes a short film by Director Alastair Siddons, who will be releasing one new video each month documenting the project. The first video shows how the project evolved in Tunisia following the country’s recent revolution.

You can see some of the videos below, with projects taking place in locations ranging from Bronx, NY to Lima, Peru:

Los Angeles, CA

New York, NY

Greene Hill, Brooklyn

São Paulo, Brazil

Lima, Peru

Kensington, PA

Paris, France

South Bronx, NY

Warwick, NY

Palo Alto, CA

Manchester, England

Image courtesy of James Duncan Davidson / TED

More About: art, TED, ted global

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In the months since TED Prize Winner JR’s global participatory art project was announced, thousands of photos have been uploaded and more than 150 huge posters sent out as the French artist looks to transform urban landscapes with portraits.

Now, JR is starting to document what he calls the Inside Out Project through video from people around the world that have taken to his call to action and pasted their portraits in the streets.

The YouTube channel, launched Thursday at TED Global in Edinburgh, Scotland, also includes a short film by Director Alastair Siddons, who will be releasing one new video each month documenting the project. The first video shows how the project evolved in Tunisia following the country’s recent revolution.

You can see some of the videos below, with projects taking place in locations ranging from Bronx, NY to Lima, Peru:

Los Angeles, CA

New York, NY

Greene Hill, Brooklyn

São Paulo, Brazil

Lima, Peru

Kensington, PA

Paris, France

South Bronx, NY

Warwick, NY

Palo Alto, CA

Manchester, England

Image courtesy of James Duncan Davidson / TED

More About: art, TED, ted global

For more Social Good coverage:

• Follow Mashable Social Good on Twitter
• Become a Fan on Facebook
• Subscribe to the Social Good channel
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An “Unfriending” Tracker for Google+

Similar to the Unfriend Finder for tracking lost Facebook friends, GoogleMINUS is a browser extension, not a full online application with a dedicated web presence.

The extension works on the Google Chrome Web browser, Firefox or Safari, and requires the Kynetx browser extension to be installed first. Kynetx is a platform that allows developers to easily build cross-platform apps that run on multiple browsers, adding extra functionality to favorite websites like Facebook, Twitter, Google, YouTube and more.

Once Kynetx is installed, you can then add any one of these dozens of apps, including GoogleMINUS, after first authenticating via Facebook or Google to establish an account on Kynetx.com. Apps are built by independent third-party developers, and in the case of GoogleMINUS, we have Aaron Frost to thank…or perhaps blame. (We’ll see how depressed this makes us first.)

What It Does

The way the GoogleMINUS works is simple – every time someone removes you from a Circle, you are notified via pop-up. More features are coming soon, says Frost, so stay tuned.

But we’re not sure if our egos can handle it…can yours?

Discuss

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What happens when you give a monkey a machete and post it on YouTube? Twentieth Century Fox is hoping the answer is box office success.

On August 5, Rise of the Planet of the Apes will make its theatrical debut. The sci-fi film is a reboot of the famous Planet of the Apes franchise and the likely start of a new series. The film focuses on a scientist who tests his cure for Alzheimer’s disease on an ape but instead gives it human-level intelligence, sparking the beginning of the war between man and ape.

As part of its promotional campaign for the movie, Fox has been ramping up the movie’s social media presence. The movie has had an active presence on Facebook and Twitter, but it’s really found its stride on YouTube.

For the past few weeks, Fox has been releasing a series of short videos on its YouTube channel. They show monkeys and apes performing tasks normally associated with humans. One video shows a gorilla walking upright while another depicts a chimp beating humans in a photographic memory test. The most popular one thus far, though, is “Ape With AK-47“, a 43-second clip that has amassed 6.8 million video views as of June 13.

None of these videos mention Rise of the Planet of the Apes. The only giveaway that the videos are meant to promote a movie is the “20th Century Fox Research Library” branding on the bottom corner of the video.

This week, Fox is following up on the success of “Ape With AK-47″ with a new video that depicts chimpanzees being taught how to use machetes by African military forces. The video, provided exclusively to Mashable, claims that these chimps have taught their offspring how to wield these dangerous weapons.

The campaign is clever, and so far it has gained a decent amount of traction. Do you think the viral video campaign will translate into box office dollars?

Check out Fox’s newest viral video, as well as the other videos in the series, in the gallery below:

Chimp With Machete

Ape With AK-47

Chimp Beats Human: Intelligence Test

Gorilla Walks Upright

Chimp Plays First Person Shooter

More About: 20th century fox, Film, Rise of the Planet of the Apes, video, viral video, youtube

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The transformation of the video industry has created great opportunities for SMEs to improve their marketing strategy at little or no cost.

According to a recent roundtable debate held by hosting specialists UKFast, small firms can now enjoy the benefits once exclusive to the big corporates because of the transformation of the online video industry.

Byron Evans, presenter and founder of Wallop explained how SMEs can use video to enhance their marketing strategies. He said: “We can cut costs down and production values don’t have to diminish so much. The common consensus is that a video should be used as a tool to complement other areas of a campaign and to coincide with social media input.”

Nicky Unsworth of marketing agency BJL, reiterated this, saying: “Most of our clients are beginning to recognise that there is a real opportunity for brands to benefit from video. There are so many different ways that they can tell a story – they can host it on YouTube, on their own websites or they can use it at conferences.”

The panelists agreed that video advertising has become an accessible medium for consumers, and that creativity rather than cash dictates how successful a video will be.

Brian Barnes, film producer and MD of Activideo, said: “There are no real barriers any more. In the old days if you could spend £300,000 on an edit suite, you were in business and that tended to keep other people out of the loop. Now you can even edit on your phone, let alone a laptop – it has gone astronomic in terms of access.”

Unsworth reiterated the increasing importance of amateur-style footage in the advertiser’s portfolio: “The latest Disney ads feel like someone has done them on a hand-held in their sitting room – they reveal to the kids that they are actually going to Disney and they film their reaction. User-generated content is definitely becoming more of the advertisers’ portfolio.”

She continued: “Marketing companies have embraced online video; the clever thing that advertisers do now is seed an idea that lives beyond the original advertisers’ concept. Brands that have done it well are Dove with the Real Women campaign, Old Spice, and T-Mobile. They have gone out and generated an idea that their audiences have adopted and developed as their own.”

Panellists discussed the increasing significance of online outlets for video. Unsworth said: “There are ads that run maybe once or twice and actually they begin to live then on YouTube and the views that they have on YouTube are so much more significant than they get on TV.”

They agreed that the key to maximising the success of any online video is to take it ‘viral’, but achieving this with a commercial video isn’t easy.

Barnes said: “It’s creativity, something new and engaging that stimulates people enough to respond. It’s got to spark that user engagement.”

Evans highlighted the importance of a video’s ‘packaging’ in its potential to go viral. He said: “It’s not just about putting it on different networks, it’s how you label it and what tags you give it. It’s a precise art that needs to be mastered before you can stick this amazing piece of work out there and get the world to embrace it.”

Post from: SiteProNews: Webmaster News & Resources

Video Strategy ‘No Brainer’ for SMEs

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One in 10 UK pets have a profile on Facebook, Twitter or YouTube, according to a recent study.

More than half of pet owners in the UK share photos of their pets on the net, suggests a study commissioned by pet insurance company PetPlan. Neil Brettell, director of PetPlan, even goes so far as to suggest that “animals are more popular than celebrities on Facebook and other social networking sites.”

Pets on social networking sites aren’t new. One might even argue that they’re one of the driving forces behind the rise of the social media phenomenon. We’ve seen dozens of popular videos and memes featuring pets, social networks aimed exclusively toward pets and popular social networking profiles “owned” by dogs, cats and other animals.

These findings support another a recent study that suggested 14% of dog owners have Facebook profiles for their dogs.

How about you? If you’re a pet owner, do you maintain a Facebook, Twitter or YouTube profile for your pet? Please, share your opinion in the comments.

Image courtesy of Emily Banks

[via Telegraph]

More About: cats, dogs, pets, social networking

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Using video to promote your website, services, or products has become an integral component of online advertising. With the explosive popularity of sites such as YouTube (now considered the number two search engine online), Vimeo, and others – it’s time to embrace video and make it work on behalf of your company and your website.

Here are some amazing statistics about online video from 2010:

* 172 million U.S. viewers watched an average of 14.6 hours of video.

* Over 40% of consumers watch online videos on a weekly basis – Over 70% watch monthly.

* YouTube serves over 1 billion videos per day.

* YouTube (owned by Google) is expected to hit $2 billion in revenue during 2011.

* Viral video marketing campaigns increase clickthrough rates by 750%. (MarketingExperiments.com, November 2006)

* E-commerce sites that use product videos sell up to 45% more. Onlineshoes.com says it sees a 45% higher conversion rate for customers who watch videos on its website. Zappos.com says it sells up to 30% more for products that it shows in videos instead of just static pictures. (Sources: ReelSEO, Internet Retailer)

Online video marketing first surged in 2007 and has been growing exponentially every year since. Over $3 billion was spent on online video advertising during 2010. With online video becoming such a major marketing player, it’s an important advertising genre to consider embracing.

Here are a few basic concepts to keep in mind when considering the use of online video to promote your website, company, products, or services:

1. If you’re going to create video to showcase a product, your services, or just introduce your business…it has to be creative and compelling. Your video needs to spark some type of emotion from the viewer. Whether it’s humorous, intriguing, or somewhat controversial, you need this “hook” to create a clip that people will want to see and recommend to others to watch. The hook is at the core of any good viral campaign. Get creative and come up with a catchy plan!

2. Online video offers another outlet to showcase your brand. Make sure that you include your site logo or company logo on any streaming video that is released. If you create and submit video to video sharing websites or other channels, then using branded video clips will further increase your website and company exposure to potential customers.

3. Testimonials. These are incredibly popular and important. Again, they need to be genuine and not manufactured. Having real customers discuss why they chose your products or services and how it has been beneficial to them displays a great deal of credibility for your company. These are the videos that you will definitely want to promote on multiple social media sites!

4. Be genuine and real. If you are going to create a video about your company…film your real employees, in your office, doing real work. Don’t “manufacture” a video that is fake and staged. People will see right through it.

5. Use video as a platform for your products. Show people how they work. Detail how and why your product is superior to competitors and why people should purchase your products. Highlight the benefits that customers will receive by purchasing your products.

6. If your business is service oriented, then show viewers how your services are performed. Explain to them what makes your services superior to competitors. Tell them why they should call or email you to procure your services.

7. Webinars (Web Seminars). These are what I like to tag as “stage 2″ videos. These are training videos that primarily work best for websites that sell products. These webinars should be created to train your customers on how to properly use your products. Most of the time, this type of video will be much more detailed and involved. However, they are extremely important as well. When a potential customer wants to purchase a product, yet they are unfamiliar on how to effectively use it, they will be reassured to know that you have online videos available to them for additional training.

8. Once you have videos in place, continue to get creative. With the emergence and popularity of QR codes, you can now offer potential customers the ability to watch a video by scanning a QR code with their smartphone. Create and print new business cards for your company that feature a QR Code that card recipients can scan and then watch a video about your company, your products, or whatever you want them to view.

This certainly isn’t an exhaustive list by any stretch. However, I hope it will compel you to think about the myriad of ways that online video can be beneficial to your company. With the constant expansion of Internet users each year, creative marketing is going to always be needed in order to succeed in the World Wide Web. Online video is emerging as one of the best and most effective ways to reach potential customers. So…grab onto it and use it creatively!

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Ruby is a one of the most popular languages used on the web. We’re running a Session here on Nettuts+ that will introduce you to Ruby, as well as the great frameworks and tools that go along with Ruby development. In this episode, we’re going to look at the too-cool-to-be-true way that Ruby objects deal with methods that don’t exist.

Video Tutorial?

A Problem (and a Solution)

Let’s say your working with a Ruby object. And let’s also say that you aren’t entirely familiar with this object. And let’s also say that you call a method that doesn’t exist on the object.

o = Object.new
o.some_method
# NoMethodError: undefined method `some_method' for #<Object:0x00000100939828>

This is less than desirable, so Ruby has an awesome way of allowing us to rescue ourselves from this. Check this out:

class OurClass
  def method_missing (method_name)
    puts "there's no method called '#{method_name}'"
  end
end

o = OurClass.new
o.some_method
# => there's no method called 'some_method'

We can create a method called method_missing in our class. If the object we’re calling the method on doesn’t have the method (and doesn’t inherit the method from another class or module), Ruby will give us one more chance to do something useful: if the class has a method_missing method, we’ll hand the information about the method cal to method_missing and let it sort the mess out.

Well, that’s great; we’re no longer getting an error message.

A Better Use

But stop and think about this for a second. First of all: no, we’re not getting an error message any more, but we aren’t getting something useful. It’s hard to say what useful would be in this case, because out method name doesn’t suggest anything. Second of all, this is pretty powerful, because it allows you to basically pass any method to an object and get an intelligent result.

Let’s do something that makes more sense; start with this:

class TutsSite
  attr_accessor :name, :tutorials

  def initialize name = "", tuts = []
    @name = name
    @tutorials = tuts
  end

  def get_tuts_about_javascript
    @tutorials.select do |tut|
      tut[:tags].include? "javascript"
    end
  end

  def get_tuts_by_jeffrey_way
    @tutorials.select do |tut|
      tut[:author] == "Jeffrey Way"
    end
  end
end

Here you see a little class for a tutorial website. When creating a new website object, we pass it a name and an array of tutorials. We expect tutorials to be hashes in the following form:

{ title: "Some title", author: "the author", tags: ["array", "of", "tags"] # Ruby 1.9

# OR

{ :title => "Some title", :author => "the author", :tags => ["array", "of", "tags"] # Ruby 1.8

We expect symbols as the keys; notice that if you’re not using Ruby 1.9, you’ll have to use the bottom format for your hashes (both work in 1.9)

Then, we’ve got two helper functions that allow us to get only the tutorial that have a JavaScript tag, or only the tutorials by Jeffrey Way. These are useful for filtering the tutorials … but they don’t give us too many options. Of course, we could make methods named get_tuts_with_tag and get_tuts_by_author that take parameters with the tag or author name. However, we’re going to go a different route: method_missing.

As we saw, method_missing gets the attempted method name as a parameter. What I didn’t mention is that it’s a symbol. Also, the parameters that get passed to the method and the block (if one was given) are available as well. Note that the parameters are passed as individual parameters to method_missing, so the usual convention is use the splat operator to collect them all into an array:

def method_missing name, *args, &block

end

So, since we can get the name of the method that was attempted, we can parse that name and do something intelligent with it. For example, if the user calls something like this:

nettuts.get_tuts_by_jeffrey_way

nettuts.get_tuts_about_html

nettuts.get_tuts_about_canvas_by_rob_hawkes

nettuts.get_tuts_by_jeremy_mcpeak_about_asp_net

So, let’s get to it; scrap those earlier methods and replace it this this:

def method_missing name, *args, &block
  tuts = @tutorials.dup
  name = name.to_s.downcase

  if (md = /^get_tuts_(by_|about_)(\w*?)((_by_|_about_)(\w*))?$/.match name)
    if md[1] == 'by_'
      tuts.select! { |tut| tut[:author].downcase == md[2].gsub("_", " ") }
      tuts.select! { |tut| tut[:tags].include? md[5].gsub("_", " ")      } if md[4] == '_about_'
    elsif md[1] == 'about_'
      tuts.select! { |tut| tut[:tags].include? md[2].gsub("_", " ")      }
      tuts.select! { |tut| tut[:author].downcase == md[5].gsub("_", " ") } if md[4] == '_by_'
    end
  else
    tuts = "This object doesn't support the object '#{name}'"
  end
  tuts
end

Don’t get worried, we’ll walk through all this now. We start by duplicating the @tutorials array; every Ruby object has a dup method that copies it; if we didn’t do this—and just said tuts = @tutorial—we would be working with the original array, which we don’t want to do; we want to preserve that array as it is. Then, we’ll filter out the tutorial hashes we don’t want.

We also have to get the name of the method; since it’s passed to method_missing as a symbol, we convert it to a string with to_s and then make sure it’s in lowercase with downcase.

Now, we have to check to see that the method matches the format we want; after all, it’s possible that someone could pass something else to the method. So, let’s parse that method name. If it matches, we’ll work out magic; otherwise, we’re return a default error message:

  if (md = /^get_tuts_(by_|about_)(\w*?)((_by_|_about_)(\w*))?$/.match name)
    #coming
  else
    tuts = "This object doesn't support the method '#{name}'"
  end

That looks like a rather daunting, but you should understand it: basically, we’re looking for “get_tuts_” followed by “by_” or “about_”; then, we have an author’s name or a tag, followed by “_by_” or “_about_” and an author or tag. If that matches, we store the MatchData object in md; otherwise, we’ll get nil back; in that case, we’ll set tuts to the error message. We do this so that either way, we can return tuts.

So the regular expression matches, we’ll get a MatchData object. If the method name used was get_tuts_by_andrew_burgess_about_html, these are the indices that you have:

0. get_tuts_by_andrew_burgess_about_html
1. by_
2. andrew_burgess
3. _about_html
4. _about_
5. html

I’ll note that if one of the optional groups isn’t filled, its index has a value of nil.

So, the data we want is at indices 2 and 5; remember that we could get only a tag, only an author, or both (in either order). So, next we have to filter out the tuts that don’t match our criteria. We can do this with the array select method. It passes each item to a block, one by one. If the block returns true, the item is kept; if it returns false, the item is thrown out of the array. Let’s start with this:

if md[1] == 'by_'
  tuts.select! { |tut| tut[:author].downcase == md[2].gsub("_", " ") }
  tuts.select! { |tut| tut[:tags].include? md[5].gsub("_", " ")      } if md[4] == '_about_'

If md[1] is “by_”, we know the author came first. Therefore, inside the block of the first select call, we get the tut hash’s author name (downcase it) and compare it to md[2]. I’m using the global substitution method—gsub—to replace all the underscores with a single space. If the strings compare true, the item is kept; otherwise it’s not. In the second select call, we check for the tag (stored in md[5]) in the tut[:tags] array. The array include? method will return true if the item is in the array. Notice the modifier on the end of that line: we only do this if the fourth index is the string “_about_”.

Notice that we’re actually using the array select method: we’re using select! (with a bang / exclamation mark). This doesn’t return a new array with only the selected items; it works with the actual tuts array in memory.

Now that you understand that, you shouldn’t have a problem with the next lines:

elsif md[1] == 'about_'
  tuts.select! { |tut| tut[:tags].include? md[2].gsub("_", " ")      }
  tuts.select! { |tut| tut[:author].downcase == md[5].gsub("_", " ") } if md[4] == '_by_'
end

These lines do the same as above, but they’re for method names in the reverse situation: tag first, optional author second.

At the end of the method, we return tuts; this is either the filtered array, or the error message.

Now, let’s test this:

tuts = [
  { title: "How to transition an Image from B&W to Color with Canvas", author: "Jeffrey Way",       tags: ["javascript", "canvas"]  },
  { title: "Node.js Step by Step: Blogging Application",               author: "Christopher Roach", tags: ["javascript", "node"]        },
  { title: "The 30 CSS Selectors you Must Memorize",                   author: "Jeffrey Way",       tags: ["css", "selectors"]          },
  { title: "Responsive Web Design: A Visual Guide",                    author: "Andrew Gormley",    tags: ["html", "responsive design"] },
  { title: "Web Development from Scratch: Basic Layout",               author: "Jeffrey Way",       tags: ["html"]                                },
  { title: "Protect a CodeIgniter Application Against CSRF",           author: "Ian Murray",        tags: ["php", "codeigniter"]        },
  { title: "Manage Cron Jobs with PHP",                                author: "Nikola Malich",     tags: ["php", "cron jobs"]          }
]

nettuts = TutsSite.new "Nettuts+", tuts

p nettuts.get_tuts_by_ian_murray
# [{:title=>"Protect a CodeIgniter Application Against CSRF", :author=>"Ian Murray", :tags=>["php", "codeigniter"]}]

p nettuts.get_tuts_about_html
# [{:title=>"Responsive Web Design: A Visual Guide", :author=>"Andrew Gormley", :tags=>["html", "responsive design"]}, {:title=>"Web Development from Scratch: Basic Layout", :author=>"Jeffrey Way", :tags=>["html"]}]

p nettuts.get_tuts_by_jeffrey_way_about_canvas
# [{:title=>"How to transition an Image from B&W to Color with Canvas", :author=>"Jeffrey Way", :tags=>["javascript", "canvas"]}]

p nettuts.get_tuts_about_php_by_nikola_malich
# [{:title=>"Manage Cron Jobs with PHP", :author=>"Nikola Malich", :tags=>["php", "cron jobs"]}]

p nettuts.submit_an_article
# This object doesn't support the method 'submit_an_article'"

I’m p-rinting out the results from these methods, so you can run this in a ruby file on the command line.

A Warning

I should mention that, while this is pretty cool, this isn’t necessarily the right use of method_missing. It’s there primarily as a safety to rescue you from errors. However, the convention isn’t bad: it’s widely used in the ActiveRecord classes that are a big part of Ruby on Rails.

A Bonus

You probably didn’t know that there was a similar feature in JavaScript: it’s the __noSuchMethod__ method on objects. As far as I know, it’s only supported in FireFox, but it’s an interesting idea. I’ve re-written the example above in JavaScript, and you can check it out at this JSBin.

Conclusion

That’s a wrap for today! I’ve got some interesting Ruby stuff up my sleeve, coming for you soon. Keep your eye on Nettuts+, and if you want something specific, let me know in the comments!

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Google has dozens of undiscovered, yet excellent products, people don’t know about. In Google Labs itself you can find plenty of useful tools and products for web designers and developers. Furthermore all Google services are free to use and that makes them appealing alternatives to paid products of a similar nature. For example, Google Docs can be a great alternative for Microsoft Office since it’s free, light and easy to use. This article presents 30 useful, practical and smashing products, tools and services from Google that you should consider using daily.

1. News

Google News is a computer-generated news site that aggregates headlines from news sources worldwide, groups similar stories together and displays them according to each reader’s personalized interests. The articles are selected and ranked by computers that evaluate, among other things, how often and on what sites a story appears online.

2. Reader

Google Reader constantly checks your favorite news sites and blogs for new content. Whether a site updates daily or monthly, you can be sure that you won’t miss a thing. With your Google Reader public page, you can share your favorite items with your friends, simply by sending them to relevant links.

3. Bookmarks

With Google Bookmarks, you can save shortcuts to your favorite webpages and navigate to them in seconds. Unlike browser bookmarks that are stored on a single computer, Google bookmarks are stored in your Google Account. This means you can access them from any computer with an internet connection.

4. Alerts

Google Alerts are email updates of the latest relevant Google results (web, news, etc.) based on your choice of query or topic. Enter the topic you wish to monitor, then click preview to see the type of results you’ll receive.

5. Sites

Google Sites is a free and easy way to create and share web pages. With Google Sites you can easily create rich web pages, collect all your info in one place and control who can view and edit it. You don’t need any knowledge of HTML and it’s free to use.

6. Blog Search

Blog Search is Google search technology focused on blogs. Blog Search helps users to explore the blogging universe more effectively, and perhaps inspire many to join the revolution themselves. Whether you’re looking for Harry Potter reviews, political commentary, summer salad recipes or anything else, Blog Search enables you to find out what people are saying on any subject of your choice.

7. Trends

With Google Trends, you can compare the world’s interest in your favorite topics. Enter up to five topics and see how often they’ve been searched on Google over time. Google Trends also shows how frequently your topics have appeared in Google News stories, and in which geographic regions people have searched for them most.

8. Gmail Labs

Gmail Labs is a testing ground for experimental features that aren’t quite ready for primetime. While you may find some awesome stuff there, you have to keep in mind that these features can break at any time or disappear altogether. However they may work so well that they graduate and become regular features.

9. PubSubHubhub

PubSubHubbub is a simple, open, server-to-server publish/subscribe protocol as an extension to Atom and RSS. Parties speaking the PubSubHubbub protocol can get near-instant notifications via WebHook callbacks when a feed they are interested in is updated.

10. Contacts

Google Contacts is a place to import, store and view all of the contact information that’s important to you. You can also create your own groups of contacts to easily email many people at once.

11. Knol

Knol is a Google project that aims to include user-written articles on a range of topics. Knol allows you to communicate, collaborate and share your knowledge with the world.

12. Moderator

Google Moderator is a tool that allows distributed communities to submit and vote on questions for talks, presentations and events. Suggested questions as well as user votes are seen in real-time.

13. Tasks

With Google Tasks you can add new tasks, set due dates or add notes, and (most satisfyingly) check them off as you’re done. Your task list stays up to date no matter how you access it. It’s a simple list that’s with you everywhere you go. You can access Google Tasks from your Google Mobile, Gmail, Calendar or iGoogle.

14. Docs

With Google Docs you can create and share your work online and access your documents from anywhere. Manage documents, spreadsheets, presentations, surveys, and more all in one easy to use productivity suite. What’s handy you can embed your created forms and use them in websites.

15. Checkout

Google Checkout allows buyers in over 140 countries to purchase goods and services using a credit or debit card through our fast, secure checkout process. Google Checkout also helps you increase sales with the Google Checkout badge that can be displayed on your AdWords ads and Product Search listings.

16. Fusion Tables

Google Fusion Tables is a modern data management and publishing web application that makes it easy to host, manage, collaborate on, visualize, and publish data tables online. There’s also a gadget that that helps you create animated flash charts & graphs for your web pages, blogs & Google Pages.

17. Double Click

Google’s DoubleClick products provide ad management and ad serving solutions to companies that buy, create or sell online advertising. The world’s top marketers, publishers, ad networks and agencies use DoubleClick products as the foundation for their online advertising businesses. With deep expertise in ad serving, media planning, search management, rich media, video and mobile, our DoubleClick products help customers execute their digital media strategy more effectively.

18. Art Project

With Google Art Project you can explore museums from around the world, discover and view hundreds of artworks at incredible zoom levels, and even create and share your own collection of masterpieces.

19. Shopper

Google Shopper helps you find information on millions of products. Google Shopper recognizes products by cover art, barcode, voice and text search. You can find local and online prices, reviews, specifications, videos, and more to help you make the best purchasing decision. With one click you can save items to your shopping list and share with your friends.

20. Voice Actions

Voice Actions for Android lets you control your phone using your voice. Call contacts and businesses, send messages, browse the web, and complete common tasks. You can do pretty much anything with it –  send simple text messages or get directions.

21. Code Search

Google Code Search helps you find function definitions and sample code by giving you one place to search publicly accessible source code hosted on the Internet. With Google Code Search, you can use regular expressions to search more precisely, restrict your search by language, license or filename and view the source file with links back to the entire package and the webpage where it came from.

22. Code Labs

In Google Code Labs, you’ll find developer products that are experimental. Some of these will one day graduate out of labs, others may remain experimental or even be shut down. That’s what a lab is for. Likewise, graduating from Google Code Labs is a big step that indicates our long-term commitment to that product.

23. Webmaster Tools

Google Webmaster Tools provides a free and easy way to make your website more Google friendly. With webmaster Tools you can see how Google crawls, indexes and ranks your website, see how many people found your site in search results, and how many people clicked on it and much more.

24. Browser Size

Google Browser Size is a visualization of browser window sizes for people who visit Google. For example, the “90%” contour means that 90% of people visiting Google have their browser window open to at least this size or larger.

25. Page Speed

Page Speed Online analyzes the content of a web page, then generates suggestions to make that page faster. Reducing page load times can reduce bounce rates and increase conversion rates.

26. Web Toolkit

Google Web Toolkit (GWT) is a development toolkit for building and optimizing complex browser-based applications. Its goal is to enable productive development of high-performance web applications without the developer having to be an expert in browser quirks, XMLHttpRequest, and JavaScript.

27. reCAPTCHA

reCAPTCHA is a free CAPTCHA service that protects your site against spam, malicious registrations and other forms of attacks where computers try to disguise themselves as a human; a CAPTCHA is a Completely Automated Public Turing test to tell Computers and Human Apart. reCAPTCHA comes in the form of a widget that you can easily add to your blog, forum, registration form, etc

28. Web Elements

Google Web Elements allow you to easily add your favorite Google products to your website. It’s a great alternative if you don’t want to create your own search engine, for instance.

29. Installable Web Apps

Installable web apps are a way of making Google Chrome treat certain websites like apps. People can find installable web apps using the Chrome Web Store. Many installable web apps are hosted apps—normal websites with a bit of extra metadata. You can build and deploy hosted apps exactly as you would build and deploy any web app, using any server-side or client-side technologies you like.

30. Dashboard

Google Dashboard is an online tool that allows Google Account holders to view all their personal information Google is storing on their servers. It’s pretty handy to manage all your Google service accounts at one place and keep them up to date.

Discover more

There are actually many more products, especially for you designers and developers. Like I mentioned before, Google has a great number of lesser known, yet powerful, development and coding tools. Listing them all would be useless, however there’s no reason why you shouldn’t check them out yourself. Here are some websites where you can learn about Google products and their features.

• Demo Slam
• Google APIs & Developer Products
• Google New

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If tweets showcase 140 characters and pictures are worth a thousand words, where do videos fit into the grand scheme of visual pleasures?

This year — on Twitter at least — videos have taken a backseat due in part to the increasing popularity of photo-sharing services like Instagram and Picplz. Although video-sharing sites and apps are playing second fiddle at the moment, a handful of Twitter users swear by their video-centric tweets.

“I share videos on Twitter because let’s face it, sometimes you can’t come across in just words,” says comedian Bradley Laborman, a frequent YouTuber and creator of BradmanTV. “Me tweeting, ‘This HOT DOG is UH-MAZING,’ is not as effective as me posting a quick video where I serenade the hot dog and scream to the sky how amazing it actually is.”

From a business perspective, company-made videos and user-generated videos have proven to be powerful marketing tools. For example, referral traffic from YouTube to the Shorty Awards website this year was higher than Google’s referral traffic to the site because many nominees created video campaigns.

“The scalability of making a great looking video clip is nuts in 2011 and will continue to get easier and easier,” says Natan Edelsburg, supervising producer for the Shorty Awards and vice president of Sawhorse Media. “A year or two from now it will be irresponsible for everyone to write a press release or make a big announcement without complementing it with some kind of short video clip.”

Whether for business or personal use, indulge in these four video-sharing services that launched or added new features in this past year. In the comments, let us know which apps you use to share your own videos on Twitter or other social sites.

1. Socialcam

Socialcam‘s tagline is: “Shoot, tag and share it with your friends … instantly.” The app, which is tied to Justin.tv, lets you sign up with your Facebook account and then share videos on multiple outlets such as Facebook, Twitter and even Google+.

In fewer than five minutes, I signed up on my Droid X, recorded a 34-second video, uploaded it and shared it. Had I recorded friends in my video, I could have tagged them even if they weren’t Socialcam users. “We hope tagging will insert a level of shareability that will wow everybody,” said Matthew DiPietro, Vice President of Marketing and Communications at Justin.tv.

“We built it very specifically for friends and family,” DiPietro added. “However, that’s the exact same thing that Mark Zuckerberg was thinking about when he launched Facebook, and Facebook is a much more widely used platform now.”

2. Viddy

Laborman uses Viddy, an app that allows you to capture, “beautify” and share 15-second videos.

“It’s basically the Instagram for video users,” Laborman says. “You shoot a video, you add a filter and you decide whether or not you want background music on the video.”

The process is simple: Click the “Share” button in the middle of the navigation panel to upload a video from your gallery or shoot a new one. Trim the clip to your liking and apply effects using “production packages.”

Viddy’s iPhone app, which launched in April and has been downloaded 500,000 times as of May, it is compatible with iPod touch and iPad but requires iOS 4.1 or later. Viddy’s website says Android, Windows and BlackBerry versions of the app are in the works.

3. Screenr

Web-based screen recorder Screenr launched in 2009, but the service recently added new features that address users’ concerns about sharing video comments via tweets.

“Previously, comments on Screenr were tied to your Twitter account and forced you to tweet your comments,” Screenr said in a blog. “Users told us they often wanted to make comments without tweeting them. Now, Screenr has bulit-in commenting so your comments stay just on Screenr. And don’t worry, there’s also a separate Tweet button if you still want to tweet your comments.”

To create a video, Mac or PC users can adjust the video frame to a size of their liking and then click record to walk viewers through an online activity. Screenr automatically provides a shortened link to the video to quicken the sharing process.

4. Zocial.tv

If you like sharing trendy videos on Twitter, Zocial.tv is the site and app for you.

Zocial.tv aggregates the most-shared videos on Twitter and Facebook, separates them into categories (i.e. music, sports, education) and creates top 25 lists sorted by today, yesterday, the week or month. The site’s sharing tool — powered by ShareThis — lets you share any of the videos on Twitter and other social sites. You also can +1 or “Like” a video.

Using the Zocial.tv website (above), I shared a video that was already in the top 25 Thursday morning in the music category. The Zocial.tv app is available for iPhone, iPod touch and iPad and requires iOS 3.1 or later.

More About: screenr, socialcam, twitter, viddy, video, web video, Zocial.tv

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Originally posted at News – Digital Media

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Another preview of a redesign by Google Inc., this one for YouTube, and it’s difficult to not like the UI improvements.

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YouTube is currently testing out a sleeker, darker design via its ideas incubator, TestTube.

The experiment, called Cosmic Panda, was announced Thursday on YouTube’s blog. The experiment is by no means a done deal when it comes to a possible redesign, though.

“We are always testing new things on YouTube with the goal of improving the site’s overall experience,” a rep tells us. “We encourage all users to opt in to this experiment and tell us what they think about it.”

When you enter Cosmic Panda, YouTube will suggest you check out a video (“Nyan Cat,” of course), a channel (The Young Turks, The Cheezburger Network or HBO), or a playlist (of Rick Rolls). In essence, the changes aren’t that drastic.

When watching a video, for example, the vid in question will be featured on a black background (instead of white). Suggested videos and comments are now located underneath the video (toggle between them), and related videos are located on the right. YouTube did add the option to easily switch the size of the video in-browser (above related videos), which is a nice supplement.

When it comes to channels, the new header is a lot more polished looking. Usually, when you click over to a channel, the featured video starts autoplaying immediately (annoying). With the new version, the header is also a video, but at first glance it appears to just be a graphic. If you click on the graphic, it will bring you to the featured video — no autoplaying involved. YouTube also rejiggered the setup so all content is found under the tabs “Featured,” “Video” and “Community.” Overall, the whole layout is much cleaner and more professional looking.

Playlists don’t look all that different, except that the new version lets you change the size of the videos easily, and lacks the “Shuffle” feature (the old version lets you shuffle).

YouTube pushed its most recent major redesign in January 2010, streamlining video pages and nixing the starred rating system. What do you think of this proposed redesign? Should YouTube take the plunge?

More About: cosmic panda, video, youtube

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Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows Part 2 premieres on Thursday in London, and fans of the franchise can check out the red carpet action live on YouTube and via Ustream and Livestream.

You can check out the Ustream above (or Livestream), or head over to YouTube, which has multiple angles of the event. YouTube has also packed the Harry Potter channel channel with all seven films (which one can rent), behind-the-scenes footage, parodies and interviews.

Livestreamed premieres are becoming an increasingly common practice on the web. YouTube streamed the premiere of The Twilight Saga: Eclipse last June, and MTV.com showcased the NYC premiere for the last Potter flick, Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows: Part 1, last November.

More About: Film, harry potter and the deathly hallows part 2, live video, livestream, video, youtube

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