LocateTV Redesigns Embeddable Widgets

LocateTV, the internet version of TV Guide which was covered here LocateTV – TV Guide On Steroids, have redesigned their embeddable widgets based on user feedback. The new widgets now come in three flavors. Vanilla, Branded and Custom.

The Vanilla design is a plain and simple graphic with no bells or whistles attached. The Branded design is their standard widget design which features the colors of their website. Probably the most useful out of the bunch is the custom design. The custom widget contains adjustable color and sizing options so that blending it in with the design of your site is a piece of cake.

LocateTV is currently asking for feedback on these new widget designs. Please visit New embed designs: go on then and let them know what you think.

On a related note, LocateTV is showing one of the most powerful resources in an online companies arsenal, two-way communication. The end users provide valuable feedback, and within a moments notice, companies can fulfill the needs of users. I hope other companies are taking notes because this is the way it should be.

Web 2.0 Summit Next Month

It’s that time of year again where the folks that pioneer the web get together for tea and biscuits to discuss new ideas, new opportunities, and give a general direction as to where the internet may be heading. The Web 2.0 Summit will take place next month from October 17-19 in San Francisco, California.

The even has an all star lineup of confirmed speakers such as Seth Goldstein, Mark Zuckerberg, Tim O’Reilly and Dr. Evil himself, Rupert Murdoch.

For the past three years, the Web 2.0 Summit has explored ideas which have already begun to slip into the mainstream. This year, we’ll highlight news from unusual suspects—the enthusiasts and dreamers touching the edges of spaces not yet conquered by the Web, as well as established players who are looking to expand into new and previously unimaginable realms.

How is the Web infiltrating new beachheads in areas we never thought it could—or would? What are the majors doing at the edge, at the loony “twenty percent time” at Google, in the labs at MSN, IBM, etc., that might inform entirely new applications, opportunities, even threats? What are the edge startups promising to redefine the center? What are the things we wish or know the Web can do, but so far, is failing us? What are the edges in terms of policy, politics, and morality?

I would appreciate it if those of you who are going to be at the event and are considering using Twitter for your coverage to let me know so I can inform my readers. I’d love to go, but I don’t have the luxury and I know there are many others in the same boat. I’d also like to know of any blogs or sites that are going to cover this event as it happens. At least that way, it would almost feel as if those who couldn’t make it, were actually in attendance.

WebSlides – Bookmarking Of The Future?

Monitoring my feeds, I’ve noticed there has been quite a bit of buzz surrounding a service called WebSlides. WebSlides is brought to you by the same folks that are behind Diigo, one of many social bookmarking services that are on the net. WebSlides allows users to take their bookmarks and turn them into a slide show.

Some of the uses for this service as stated by Diigo include:

Create a guided tour for any website
Show a list of houses to real estate clients
Review a list of job candidates found online
Bundle important course resources for students
Assemble all the pages on a specific family line.
Provide guided use cases for potential customers
Share the favorite places you would like to visit with your friends and blog readers
Provide a quick briefing, a simple tutorial or guided tour on any subject.

Here is an introductory video highlighting the service and what it’s capable of.

The ideas and the possibilities, do seem endless. The service is currently in an invite-only stage of life however, I have signed up and if they provide me with an invitation, I’ll be sure to provide you with an in depth review.

From ValleySchwag To StartupSchwag

If any of you were fans of ValleySchwag, I’m sure your excited to see StartupSchwag. Roddy claims he has studied and learned from the mistakes of ValleySchwag and will be focusing on TShirts rather than everything else. Like it’s predecessor, StartupSchwag will be a surprise, web 2.0 Tshirt of the month club. Roddy has also stated that if there are any other schwag items such as ( stickers, lanyards, ect ) that they would be given out. Whenever those items would disappear, Tshirts would always be available.

The first set of schwag featured on the site is from TechCrunch. Go figure. The cost of joining the club in the U.S. is $19.55 which includes the standard $14.95 fee and $4.60 for Shipping and Handling. For Canadian or Mexican residents, the cost is $23.50 while International residents will be paying $25.40. The only item your guaranteed to receive each month is a Tshirt, but every now and then you might pick up a mystery bag filled with goodies. I think it’s a reasonable price if your into this kind of apparel.

On a related note, I have to admit that I have seen quite a bit of demand for items such as Web 2.0 inspired Tshirts, startup stickers, web 2.0 startup hoodies, all kinds of weird apparel so people can flaunt their favorite companies. If your looking at getting into the apparel business, Web 2.0 inspired clothing is a niche market which seems very ripe for the picking right now. If you happen to launch a company that specializes in Web 2.0 apparel or if you know of one that already exists, by all means let me know.

Web 2.0 Search Engine And One Thousand Links

Web 2.0 Search Engine is exactly what you would think it would be. Use the search engine to search for any Web 2.0 specific terms such as Ajax, mashups, blogging, viral videos, tagging, ect. The web 2.0 search engine even provides their own definition to the term although we all know O’Reilly has that claim. I decided to give this search engine a try and just for fun, I typed in Jeffro2pt0. Unfortunately, there were no results found.

The search engine also provides a link to their top 1,000 web 2.0 sites and services, organized by categories. An insane resource of Web 2.0 goodness, all on one page.

Let me know what you discover by using this search engine.

Twitter Blocks – A Different View Of Twitter

Twitter has an interesting new page called Twitter Blocks, which allows you to view recent status reports from friends, and the people that follow them.

Twitter Blocks gives users the oppurtunity to take a deeper look at their network of friends. The light blue blocks refer to your own account, the red blocks are your updates while the grey shaded blocks contain updates from friends of friends.

The Twitter Blocks page is sponsored by Motorola, so it’s nice to see that Twitter is finding different ways of making money.

Yappd Finally Getting Somewhere

Yappd, the service that was awarded my first negative review which can be read here, has released a few updates which finally make the service worth using. These updates include uploading photos, public API and TinyURL Support.

Yappd members can now upload photos via their web site. Yappd has also added in support so that you’ll be notified if friends on your watchlist have posted any Yappd messages. If your a developer, and for some reason would like to integrate Yappd into your application or website, you can now visit http://yappd.com/api to tap into their Beta API.

Yappd claims they are focusing on the capabilities of their platform by allowing member’s of other microblogging websites, to have their other “messages” posted as Yapps automatically. Another item on their to do list includes, expanding their mobile carrier support for picture messaging and international support.

With these updates in mind, I may have to go back to the Yappd site and give it another try.

LocateTV – TV Guide On Steroids

The idea behind LocateTV is simple – to let you find TV shows available where you live in the world, be they on broadcast TV, online or on recorded media (DVD, HD-DVD etc). In addition we provide tools to assist you, so that your readers can find where they can watch the TV content that you are talking about.

If I had to review this site in one sentence or less, I’d say it was your TV Guide on roids. LocateTV is a search engine that provides you with up to date results on when a particular actor, TV show or movie will appear on TV, DVD or WebTV. For instance, I used the search terms “Back To The Future“. The first result lets me know that Back To The Future, was a movie released in 1985. The result page gives you a brief description of the movie letting you know which actors appeared as well as the movie credits.

Search Results Page On LocateTV

Below all of the information related to the movie itself are three tabs. One for Upcoming TV showings, another for DVD and another for WebTV. WebTV… Does anyone still use WebTV? At any rate, at the time of this writing, BTTF will be showing three seperate times on Sunday September 2nd on Cinemax. Each showing includes an embed link which allows you to embed the show time information into your blog or any other form that allows embeddable html. Let’s give it a shot.

I don’t think you’ll be able to place this in a blogs sidebar because of the size of this thing but, it’s a cool way to be able to tell your visitors when the next showing of your favorite show will be on.

Clicking on the DVD tab shows retailers who are currently selling the specific DVD or a DVD set containing the movie in question. Some of the retailers I’ve seen include Amazon, Deep Discount.com, Movies Unlimited and Barnes&Noble.com. LocateTV earns a small percentage of the DVD sale if you purchase the DVD through the LocateTV site. While I browsed around, I didn’t notice any ADs, so this could be the way they plan on monetizing the service.

One of the features I almost forgot to mention, is the ability to personalize your search results. In the top right corner of the LocateTV website, there is a button that you can press that gives you the ability to choose which country you live in (At the moment there are only three countries supported) type in your address, and then select your programming provider. In my case, it was Time Warner Cable. I recommend going through this process before you begin searching the site so the results are as accurate as possible.

While performing a search for Deadliest Catch, my favorite reality based TV show, I came across a 2007 entry that did not contain a synopsis. This struck me as odd but it gave me the oppurtunity to send LocateTV a feature request. I requested that users be able to submit a synopsis of a particular show for review by the LocateTV staff members or, that they configure the synopsis part of the search results as a wiki that can be edited only by registered members.

Final Thoughts:

If your blogging about a particular television show that you watched or you have seen something worth recommending, chances are, other folks would also like to see it. You owe it to yourself and others to use the embed feature of LocateTV to tell others when the show will be appearing next. LocateTV is trying to solve a huge problem:

The problem we are continuously striving to solve is that legitimate TV content is available from an ever changing list of different places depending upon where you live – be that different TV channels, different online sources, or on different recorded media. The big challenge for us is to collate this information together, so that people from different geographic locations can find the same content. We are launching with coverage of the UK and US. We aim to broaden this coverage over time.

It’s my opinion that these guys are doing a good job thus far. They are actively fixing glitches in their search system as their change log points out and now, I don’t have to remember which channel the program was on, nor do I have to remember dates or times. I can do a quick search on LocateTV and then publish that information.

Special Offer For Readers Of This Site

LocateTV is still in private beta. They have let me know that, they are aiming to have a public beta within the next few weeks, then they will go public. LocateTV was kind enough to provide me with three invitations to their service that I could give away to you, the readers. So if your interested in giving this service a test spin and think you can add some valuable feedback to the LocateTV team, let me know in the comments section and I’ll set you up with an invite. Be sure to use a real email address when leaving a comment since thats the address the invite will be sent to.

Is Tumblr Dead?

tumblr.com Logo

Tumblr, the service that makes publishing to your blog a breeze seems to be showing signs that the service is dead. Granted, there have been no official announcements and the following is only my opinion based on observations that anyone can make. Upon visiting the official blog for Tumblr, the last post to be published – Tumbling Towards 2.0 was back on April 27, 2007.

The post goes on to describe the development of Tumblr 2.0 and what to look forward to. Since today is August 28th, many Tumblr users are beginning to scratch their heads, wondering what is going on. Take a look at the comments on their last blog entry and you’ll see users are already starting to ask if Tumblr is dead.

No one seems to know where Tumblr is heading. Wouldn’t that be interesting if Tumblr, tumbled into it’s own demise? As I said, it’s not for certain if the service is dead or not but all of the signs I’ve seen point to that observation. What do you think? Am I just blowing smoke?

*UPDATE* It would appear as though I’m not the only one who has brought this subject up within the past few days. Amit published a post a few days ago where Marco, a Tumblr team member responded to his post with the following comment:

Tumblr and Davidville are both doing great and we’re hard at work on Tumblr’s next release. We’ll have something to say on the blog when it’s ready, I’m sure.

This is not the Tumblr forum – it’s my personal site. Official Tumblr news will never be posted here.

But your comment is duly noted. Thank you.

25 Sites To Watch Via PCWorld

PCWorld has put together a list of 25 websites worth watching. The list includes sites such as ClipMarks, Meebo, Spock, Pageflakes, Approver.com and others. Out of the sites PCWorld covers, the one that I am the most excited about is probably ClipMarks. ClipMarks is just an overall cool service that allows me to clip various portions of articles I discover across the web. It’s almost as if I’m creating my own search engine based on my ClipMarks which is then shareable to the public.

At any rate, give the list a read and when your finished, please leave a comment letting me know your thoughts.

Thoughts and Insanity From Jeff

The Musings Of Jeff Chandler

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