Friday, February 13, 2009 at 09:33AM 
slap the spacebar for the next clip!
Today POKE and I are launching KideoPlayer. A fun and safe way to “channel surf” YouTube.
As a creatively-focused web nerd and as a parent of two young boys under the age of 2, I try to keep my family engaged with what is happening online, including interacting with, sharing and viewing of safe content. Having sat down to try and find this safe content with my boys a couple of times now, I can tell you it is not easy to locate. If you search long enough for YouTube content that is appropriate, it always returns search results with wonderful gems to share, but, they are usually sitting right next to something questionable - if not - down right offensive.
I was amazed to see how little has been done to help curate they sea of online video content in a way that makes it easy, interesting, and fun for parents and kids to experience together. Online video and simple interactivity can be a great source of entertainment and learning for the whole family. Someone just needs to care enough to make it so.
I will spend my free time sourcing, identifying and curating the safest, most educational (and most FUN) YouTube videos I can find. This ongoing list of videos will be served up in a simple little interactive package that I can sit down and play with my boys. I call this package “KideoPlayer.” e.
And since I’m doing this online (and the web is as social as social can be) you get the benefit of all my hard work. Yay!
KideoPlayer is based on POKE’s UPL8.TV framework (@neonarcade’s brainchild) It allows for easy video surfing by using your keyboard (spacebar) to “skip” forward to the next interesting thing. UPL8 is also cool because you can search YouTube using the URL field. For example, entering http://upl8.tv/hamster+dance basically rolls your own rediculous hamster dance mash up channel. Pure poetry.
Ok, back to kids…
KideoPlayer works the same way. Only different. :) It seems that YouTube’s G-Rated filter has some flaws. You see, KideoPlayer can’t reliably search only “Safe” areas of YouTube right from the URL bar as some questionable content still sneaks through. As such, we’ve built in a work-around.
Typing http://kideoplayer.com/babyeinstein still executes a search. The only difference is that it searches “locally” — only sifting through the library of videos that I am curating. Neat huh? Just by typing that you’ve rolled your very own “Baby Einstein” channel. From there, you can keep using it like the regular KideoPlayer features, and use the spacebar to get to the next Baby Einstein video (in this case). Bear with us! As I tag more video from behind the scenes, these search queries will get more and more robust.
As parents, it is up to us to be informed about what and how our children play and to make appropriate choices on their behalf. Fortunately, there are many tools and resources that we as parents can utilize to be better parents in the information age. Perhaps someday, this will be one of them.e.
In the meantime, enjoy! Oh, and remember parents - watch with your kids and slap the spacebar for the next clip! e.
Love,
Tom and your friends at POKE
Read more on UPL8.tv here.
Submit videos you’d like to see on KideoPlayer here.
Meat
KidoPlayer is picking up steam! To read my original posting on KideoPlayer, click here.
Funny little tidbit: When I first picked out the name KidoePlayer, I did a Google Search for it and there was just about 1,000 returns for names similiar. Just today I searched for “kideoplayer” on Google and found near 11,000,000 mentions! This is fantastic!
To run the Google search and see the KideoPlayer mentions, click here.
Thanks everyone (friends, new friends and family) for helping get the word out. The mentions online and the traffic seem to be doubling every day. Please, if you love the site - give us some feedback. We’d love for it to keep growing.
Yay!
entertainment kideoplayer kids launches online safety video youtube | posted in: media and entertainment Monday, February 9, 2009 at 09:34AM 
Ok, now I’m inspired. There are cakes, and then there are Game Cakes, then there are ones that “take the Game Cake.” I think this did that. Err, something. Anywayz, this Super Mario Galaxy cake is just friggin’cool.
Found on Kotaku.
Thursday, February 5, 2009 at 10:12AM More innovation in the music world. I love when musicians dabble in social media. When done right, it can be a elegant smashing of the “3rd wall”.
Jimmy Eat World has just launched a new site for its American tour that uses Twitter to give fans an easy way to chat about each concert before, after and during the event. Awesome. To use the system, simply send a tweet to @jimmyeatworld, followed by the date of the upcoming concert you’ll be attending. Here are the complete instructions:
Check out the new Jimmy Eat World tour section at http://tour.jimmyeatworld.com! You can tweet about our upcoming tour dates by tweeting @jimmyeatworld #YYYYMMDD (where YYYYMMDD is the date of the show). For example, @jimmyeatworld #20090223 can’t wait to see you in New York!
Tweets pertaining to each show are separated and presented on their own pages, wich is awesome as it makes each show moving forward gets a “social documentary” of sorts that could live on far longer than the show or the band themselves. Really amazing way to relive a moment. Imagine reliving woodstock? Actually scratch that. Bad idea.
Anyhows, it’s a cool system, but it could probably use some work - for example - the length of the hash tags (#___) could get frustrating if you wanted to really chat it up. Hey guys, why not use an easy abbreviation for each show #sf_jimmy).
Just another sign that Twitter is definitely going mainstream.
Wednesday, February 4, 2009 at 07:39PM
If you’ve read Scott McCloud’s books on understanding the comic (visual) language, it will come as no surprise that his daughter is amazing too.
Here’s an incredible presentation by a teenager that we can all learn from.
Sky McCloud Presentation from Duarte Design on Vimeo.
Thanks, Community Guy! Nice find.
Wednesday, February 4, 2009 at 09:44AM
Meet Google Latitude. Google’s next foray into location based networking (miss you, dodgeballl. sniff.) It lets you see where your friends are on a map (Google Maps for mobile and iGoogle) so you can plan an impromptu meetup, see that a loved one got home safely, or you know, stalk people.
But that’s not the bad news. The bad news? (No iPhone support yet.) Grr.
It was only a matter of time before Google entered this market, and no doubt millions of people will soon be flooding the service with their up-to-the-minute location details. With the combination of Google Maps, Google Latitude, Google Friend Connect, and Android, it’s not very difficult to begin daydreaming about the potential for this service.
But it’s also a leap of faith as a user, entrusting Google with yet another piece of data that helps them figure out the puzzle of understanding you - and how and where you’re likely to perform actions that put money in Google’s pocket. It will be interesting to see where Google goes with this one - and interesting to see where you’re going, you know, now that I can stalk you.
Thursday, January 29, 2009 at 11:24PM OK, I can admit when I’m wrong. And boy do I stand corrected on Hulu’s rise to greatness. Though I’m not much of a Hulu fan, it seems to really be getting some traffic. This was a huge tactical win for NBC Universal, which owns part of Hulu (along with News Corporation)
As the great media war continues to rage, CBS isn’t just sitting on the sidelines. In their takeover last year of the tech site CNET, it snagged the TV.com URL and has finally starting adding some serious content. A refresh earlier this month has also taken the site past the mere “promo clip” launch phase - into full-length programming; (movies and prime-time TV shows) that come from a slew of major partners like Sony (and their wealth of great premium content), MGM, PBS, and even CBS-owned Showtime.
Here’s the kicker - TV.com’s launch phase barely offered video. (It was basically previews, cast profiles, interviews, and discussions)—yet it had 16.5 million viewers per month even then.
Look for their numbers to start climbing steadily over the course of 2009.
Boxee on the other hand, gathers video from all over the Web (Hulu, YouTube, CNN.com, and many others including your very own feeds) and puts it in a very neat and easy-to-use interface that can be accessed on your PC or on the TV in the living room. This creates something like a programming guide for Internet video, such that you don’t have to surf around to different video sites—all your favorite Web video is right in front of you. One of my favorite features of Boxee is how it accesses and organizes the video, images, and music that I have on my local hardware AND out on the interwebs - putting it all in one place - my TV.
The current version of Boxee runs on Intel-based Macs, Apple TV, and Linux machines (it works particularly easily on Ubuntu distributions). A Windows version should be ready soon, Boxee says. (boxee.tv)
All in all you can expect 2009 to bring us some pretty incredible changes in how you “watch”. (tv.com) (boxee.tv)
Every music video you’ve ever loved, ever. (And a pretty cool API to boot!) ‘Nuff said. (MTVmusic.com)
Since the demise of Dodgeball, location-based mobile networking is something that at least a dozen start-ups, not to mention big Valley projects like Yahoo’s OneConnect and Fire Eagle, have tried to master. Nobody’s been able to make it work, perfectly, but they’re going to keep trying. And 2009 is the year you will get really “into” location based networking. Two examples that seem to have gotten us closer to the future are the iPhone’s Loopt andTweetie.
So how do they work? Basically the apps let you stalk, well, maybe not stalk, ok, fine, stalk your pals when you’re needing a buddy fix. Loopt alerts you when your friends are nearby, but shows you their pics, reviews, and favorite hangouts right on your mobile device. Tweetie lets you search for people tweeting near your current location, all so you can meet up wherever, whenever. (Loopt), (Tweetie)
You probably know by know how big of a fan I am of the current wave of social music. You probably also know how hard I took the recent collapse/neutered relaunch of Muxtape. My pasture anew? Blip.fm. Whle Muxtape allowed you to upload your mp3s and share it with others, Blip.FM takes it much further. In Blip.FM you can add favorite DJs and as they add music to their playlist it will show up on your Blip homepage. You basically then navigate your homepage as a playlist (made up of as many or as few DJ’s as you’d like).
I’m not the first to make this comparison, but Blip.fm also acts like a “Twitter for music.” Your scrolling playlist is an ongoing list of the DJ’s you follow and their song choices. These are called Blips. You can listen to the “blipped” songs as they come up, or skip up and down the list to songs you like. If you like a particular user (called DJs here), you can give them “props” for the songs they play, or you can choose to “follow” that DJ. After you have found a decent number of DJs to follow, you can switch to a mode where you see only that group’s blips.
If you think of a song you want to blip, you just search for it, make your selection from the search results, write a little comment about it, hit send, and then your blip is added to the stream of other blips. The site then shows you the other members who have also blipped that artist. It’s surprisingly engaging and fun, especially if you find good DJs to follow, or if your own real-world friends sign up and participate. (blip.fm)
This one is near and dear to me. The Qik app (which I currently run on my Nokia n95 and iphone) records LIVE video on your mobile and broadcasts it live to your Qik profile (or where ever else you embedded your channel). Qik’s platform lets you can easily stream and share live video from your mobile phone camera. When visiting the site, it’s easy to find live video streams being shot by Qik members from around the world. This is great for family stuff, like wife’s mom in Salt Lake City watching her baby grandsons in Connecticut in real time, for example.
After you are finished streaming your video live over Qik, and, if you have already set your account up to do so, Qik sends the video to YouTube, your blog, or to your page on Facebook. You also get access to the video files (I happen to love this download feature) letting you pull down each video so you can store it on your own hardware.
Unlike many video solutions, using Qik does not require any fancy hardware to work properly. 2009 will be the year many more video enthusiasts and life bloggers flock to live streaming like this because of how simple and straight-forward Qik makes it. (qik.com)
The facts: The iPhone app store is wildly successful. RIM is launching sexier-looking more entertainment-oriented smartphones. People love their Crackberry’s.
RIM is planning on taking a page from the iPhone playbook by opening up a store for independently developed BlackBerry apps, called the BlackBerry Application Storefront. Nuff said. (BlackBerry Storefront Signup)
With 5 million users worldwide and growing, Power.com might be a name you’ll hear a lot more of this year. The self-proclaimed “social inter-networking” site operates on the premise that many of us now belong to several social networking sites and that it’s a hassle to log into and post to each one separately.
Power.com lets you log in once, then view (and post to) any of a long list of social networking sites that you sync the service up with—all from one place. You can see the posts, status changes, and so on, of your friends on multiple social networks, and simultaneously send new messages or updates to all of those sites (similar to Ping.fm). You can also automatically log into, and instant message using MSN from within Power.com—cool. (power.com)
All your links, files, bookmarks, and media in one place. It’s about damn time. (hordit.com)
OK, fine. 11 gamechangers. My extra pick for gamechanger in 2009 is a big idea from a guy by the name of Jason Satler. From the site: “In this up and down economy I’m outsourcing my wardrobe (namely shirts) to corporate america and you! I’m going to wear a different shirt for 365 days straight in 2009, take multiple pictures throughout my day and blog about it. Days are sold at “face value” so January 1 is $1 and December 31 is $365.”
Would you make yourself into ad space? In an age when there’s no telling what they’ll come up with next, I’m not afraid to tell you: “I wish I’d thought of that”. (iwearyourshirt.com)
Thursday, January 29, 2009 at 10:02AM
Thursday, January 29, 2009 at 09:28AM Psst.
Hey. You. Yeah, You. The one who’s still trying to be a lil’ more social with your branding efforts…
(Hi!) I have a secret for you. Steal from Mr. Obama.
(“The Social Pulpit” is a very interesting analysis of how the Barack Obama campaign used social media. The folks at Edelman compiled this report, and there are many lessons that businesses can also apply, so check it out.)
Oh and while you’re at it, read this too.
Wednesday, January 14, 2009 at 08:17AM 
Neato. Just discovered Webmynd and I really like it. From the site:
Personalize your search — Visualize your browsing. WebMynd helps you find and keep track of information from the sources that you most value. Personalize the right-hand side of Google with sources such as Wikipedia, YouTube, Twitter, Flickr, Amazon, and your WebMynd visual browsing history. Record your browsing like a DVR for the web with easy privacy configuration.See images, reviews and download for Firefox here.
Thursday, January 8, 2009 at 01:30PM Press 1 on your seatback console to accept or 2 to decline…” :)
Wow. Really? An African Airline (launching this month) called Airtimes Airlines is planning on offering flights where you… waiiit for it….
Pay by the minute.
Hipster targeted travel pricing? Recession planning? I have not clue, but in an industry notorious for delays would you be willing to pay per minute? Maybe if you get some minute by minute credit. Maybe I’d pay per mile, or even destination, but hmm.