Video

Quickeo builds nice multimedia e-mails, but snags hold it back

It's been a while since we covered a file transfer product like Izimi, Tubes, YouSendIt, or Zapr. But there are still new solutions popping up to solve the problem of sending big files. The latest--that we know of--is Quickeo.

This product's special sauce is that it will bundle up several multimedia files into an attractive e-mail "album". When a recipient clicks on link in the e-mail, it will fire up a Web page that he or she can use to play your files directly.

To create a Quickeo album and send these e-mails, you need to … Read more

CitySearch gets new look, video listings

CitySearch is unveiling a newer, darker look this morning. Gone are the white and blue, which have been replaced by themed city pages, and a glassy, rounded look. The review and directory service has undergone some usability tweaks as well, including dropping the 1-to-10 rating scale in favor of a simpler five-star model and simplifying the look and feel of the home page.

CitySearch is also launching a new part of the site called My CitySearch, which keeps track of your recently searched-for establishments, and gives you recommendations based on your ratings.

The most exciting change to CitySearch's pages, … Read more

Can Silverlight hit this one outta the park?

Baseball fans will want to keep an eye on this promise. Microsoft's Silverlight could be used to bring live Major League Baseball to your mobile phone. The MLB folks were on stage at MIX in Las Vegas, showing off the next generation of baseball video services. Their capper was a live game on a Windows-enabled cell phone. We've embedded MLB's presentation to the left.

Webby Award winners: Mentos, ninjas, and 'The Office'

The winners of the 11th Annual Webby Awards, which are devoted to "honoring excellence on the Internet," have been announced. Encompassing nearly 70 categories in Web sites, interactive advertising, mobile media, and online video, this year's winners ran the gamut from a site devoted to cute photos of baby animals to the hit NBC sitcom The Office.

Each category had five official nominees, and within each category there was a judge-picked winner as well as a "Peoples' Voice" winner chosen by a popular vote. (In some categories, the same site won both awards.) A full … Read more

Mr. Bean vs. the iPod

Could the video iPod face a serious challenge from a Dutch media player? That's what the cheeky monkeys at U.K.-based Pocket-lint appear to be saying with this headline.

The supposed contender is the "Blaze" MP4 player from Holland's Sweex, which sports a 1.8-inch color display and can has all the usual functions and, in its latest version, comes with a pair of "exclusive" Sennheiser MX 300 earphones as well as 4GB of memory. No price has been disclosed, which makes it tough to gauge the Blaze's market prospects, though earlier … Read more

YouTube adds Active Sharing feature to videos

YouTube has added a new feature to its TestTube section as of last night, called Active Sharing. With this feature enabled, YouTube will keep track of videos you watch, for both archiving and real-time interaction with other users. If you're watching a video with other Active Sharing-enabled users, you'll be able to see their names with a little green dot next to it to signify they're watching too. Clicking on someone's profile name will show you the last five shows they've watched using the service.

Active Sharing joins the other TestTube projects, Audio Swap [hands-on] … Read more

Vudu: Netflix killer or just another VOD wannabe?

Heard of Vudu? Neither had anybody else until this weekend, when the Silicon Valley start-up got a double shot of well-coordinated publicity that's been burning up the Web: a big write-up in the New York Times and a batch of exclusive photos on Gizmodo. Vudu, it seems, is the latest stab at a video-on-demand movie box--a little set-top device that hooks to your TV and downloads movies from a broadband Web service. But Vudu looks to have some key advantages over past efforts from the likes of RCA and MovieBeam. First, it has the backing of most of the … Read more

Nintendo to ramp up Wii production

Nintendo said Friday that it would address shortages of its hit Wii video game console by ramping up production.

According to the Associated Press, the video game giant's president, Satoru Iwata acknowledged that "we have not been able to properly foresee demand."

The company said it would boost sales of the Wii--which has dominated the next-generation console battle against Microsoft's Xbox 360 and Sony's PlayStation 3 since it was released in November--so that deliveries would increase by next month.

The news came a day after Nintendo released fiscal 2007 results showing that revenue had … Read more

Start-up SideReel is newest Web video directory

Recently launched SideReel wants to be a combination Internet video portal, TV guide and search engine, according to CEO Roman Arzhintar.

One of the largest hurdles confronting online video is how to help viewers find what they want. Plenty of companies are trying to solve the problem by offering either powerful search engines (Blinkx) or by hosting as much quality video on their sites as possible (Veoh Networks and Joost).

SideReel has an index featuring links to TV shows, movies and other popular longer-format video attractions found online. The Web site doesn't host a single clip.

Want to watch … Read more

Judge tosses out Jack Thompson's lawsuit against Gawker Media

GamePolitics.com is reporting that U.S. District Judge Paul Huck has dismissed anti-video game crusader Jack Thompson's lawsuit against Gawker Media, the publisher of game blog Kotaku. Thompson had claimed that Kotaku and Gawker Media had failed to honor his requests to remove "threatening" comments from several of their blog posts that were critical of his eagerness to blame video games for the tragic Virginia Tech shootings earlier this month.

On Wednesday, Thompson had added the blog-publishing company, which also operates other popular blogs like Gizmodo, Wonkette, and Valleywag, to a list of defendants in a … Read more