Video

Host a video conferencing party on your phone

I'm looking at a cell phone screen and four faces are looking back. It's CTIA 2008, the biggest wireless and cell phone trade show of the year, and the CEO of iVisit, a multiparty video conferencing app for PCs, Macs, and mobile phones, is demoing the product, iVisit Teleport. I must say, the slick, feature-rich app looks pretty cool on Orang Diamaleh's large-screen smartphone.

The simplest way to think about iVisit Teleport is as a P2P social network that lets you call, chat, video conference, and transfer multimedia for up to 8 contacts at a time. You … Read more

Crossfade TV: The Best of SXSW 2008

In case you haven't noticed, the Download Music crew is back in San Francisco after a massive week of music at South by Southwest in Austin, Texas. We've been posting like crazy to Crossfade about some of our favorite shows; we picked a handful of top artists for our Best of SXSW playlist; and we cut a special SXSW episode of our weekly music show Crossfade TV as well, highlighting great performances by the likes of Duffy, Lou Reed, Ice Cube, Explorer's Club, These Are Powers, Enslaved, and Guilty Simpson.

Slide on over to CNET TV for … Read more

Video: New York geeks gone wild at karaoke bar

I guess it was impossible to shake off that South by Southwest geek-turned-rock-star fever. On Wednesday night, New York's new-media nerds had no problem taking center stage at a Chinatown karaoke outing.

Case in point: this video of two dudes and an unidentified female rocking out to Green Day's Boulevard of Broken Dreams. Those guys, in case you don't know 'em, are a pretty big deal. The skinny one who looks like he should be fronting a garage band is Tumblr founder David Karp, and the Jimmy Kimmel lookalike is Silicon Alley Insider reporter Dan Frommer (whose bosses are loving the fact … Read more

Security hole in VLC Player

Torrent-watching Web site TorrentFreak is reporting a major security hole in the popular open-source media player VideoLAN, also known as the VLC Player (download for Windows and Mac. "The reported vulnerability makes it possible for a malicious user to run arbitrary code, potentially taking remote control of the host machine," according to TorrentFreak.

The hole gets exploited from a subtitle file buffer overflow, and it's platform independent--meaning it could strike users of Mac and Linux operating systems, as well as Windows fans. VLC users who avoid subtitle files won't face any problems. Another solution is to … Read more

ClipFinder searches, streams, and downloads

Programs that grab videos from Web sites like YouTube aren't a dime a dozen--they're a dime for 200 dozen. Most of them aren't that good, either, which makes Ashampoo's freeware ClipFinder such a breath of fresh air in the video-grabbing game.

Play back your FLVs, fast and free

Sometimes, you just don't need the whole enchilada. Freeware video players like The KMPlayer, GOM Player, VLC Player, and others are excellent at what they do and are generally lightweight, but they look like top-heavy refrigerators compared with these nimble and zippy yet similarly named Flash players. But are Free FLV Player, FLV Player, Riva FLV Player, and BitComet FLV Player all the same, or does one pull ahead of the pack?

New Review: Screensaver surveillance for Mac, PC

I was surfing the Web flipping through my bookmarks Sunday afternoon when I found a great screensaver for both Windows and Mac. SurveillanceSaver cycles through more than 400 surveillance cameras from around the world. Before you begin fashioning a hat from tinfoil and closing all your blinds, I should note these cameras are mostly wide-sweeping live shots from various countries.

SurveillanceSaver cycles randomly through each camera giving you about 2 minutes to take in the surroundings before switching to a new camera. You'll get live streams of a blizzard in Helsingborg, Sweden, followed by a shot of a lonely … Read more

Exclusive! Mashable czar knows how to mosh

Because it's Monday, I figure you could all use a little amusement. Here's a blurry camera-phone video shot at Friday night's launch party for New York dot-com Dropio at the West Village nightclub Le Royale, in which the dance floor got a little bit rowdy.

Watch British import Pete Cashmore, founder of social-networking blog Mashable, bounce around like Silly Putty. (He's the guy in the Mashable T-shirt.) With him is entrepreneur and dance-floor buddy Michael Gruen (guy in the argyle sweater).

Happy Monday!

Updated: Skype for Mac

One of the best choices for online telephony for Mac just got better. The latest Skype update pushes the program to version 2.7.257 adding support for Mac OS X 10.5 Leopard and higher-resolution video for face-to-face video calls. The new default resolution is 640x480 pixels at 25 frames per second. You are only limited by your Webcam, so get out there and upgrade so that your friends and family can have a bigger, crisper view of your smiling mug on their desktop.

Skype has always been one of my favorite applications for its familiar chat-like interface, and … Read more

First Look: Videora iPod Converter

The very popular Videora iPod Converter is one case in which an app shouldn't be too hastily judged by its name. This video-converting freebie transforms files for the range of Apple's ilk--three types of iPods and the iPhone to boot. Videora iPod Converter can grab and convert YouTube videos through an in-app browser (this is good for owners of the classic iPods), and will also work over files stored on your desktop (this is good for everyone).

However, Videora iPod Converter isn't the only free converter in town, and it has some notable drawbacks. Decide if it'… Read more