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Recent RWW Appearances on The Interwebs

Yours truly (RWW editor Richard MacManus) was interviewed at Web 2.0 Summit in San Francisco by Alison McNeill of bub.blicio.us:

Marshall Kirkpatrick was recently on the popular TWiT.tv show net@night with Amber and Leo. The hosts Amber MacArthur and Leo Laporte had a lot of fun trying to pronounce our name - hence the episode title of WeadWiteWeb!

Also check out Marshall's podcast with The Recruiters Lounge, talking about our new product Jobwire, and Jason Cormier's interview with Marshall on Capture The Conversation.

Myspace's latest feature to let users use their webcams to record videos is something that Facebook and Youtube members have long had the pleasure of doing. Youtube was the first service to introduce this feature back in December of 2006. Facebook followed suit and introduced the feature in May of 2007.

Unfortunately, Myspace hasn't brought anything new to the table. Videos have a recording limit of up to 10 minutes, which is the same as Youtube. On the other hand, Facebook allows its users to extend their recording time up to 20 minutes. All of these services offer privacy settings for your videos. Youtube is the only one that forces you to make your video private after publishing it publicly first. We found the video quality from Myspace to be sub-par at best. We've experienced better recording and play-back quality from video services like Seesmic and 12seconds.tv. We guess something's better than nothing, right?

What To Expect

You can expect to see more videos and hear more noise on Myspace profiles. We just hope that users don't take this too far and record the most outrageous things with their webcams. Musicians can definitely take things to the next level with the new webcam recording feature. Fans of musicians could start seeing recordings of mini-studio sessions from bands or get a sneak peek on a new song from an artist. Musicians could even use the feature to send quick shoutouts to fans or address any questions immediately. All of this can be done without the hassle of recording from a separate software, converting the video, and waiting for it to finish uploading to Myspace. Now Myspace will do all the dirty work for you.

New on 12seconds.tv

Soon after their successful public launch, 12seconds.tv implemented a host of new goodies to make the service more appealing for its users. The most popular new feature is the daily challenge. The service asks users to respond to a particular challenge of the day. A new challenge appears everyday. While it's fun to participate in the challenges, users can also win rewards for their participation.

API Launch

Today the service is launching the first version of their API. To give users and developers a taste of what can be done, 12seconds.tv has partnered with a great Twitter client known as TweetDeck, another video-blogging service known as Phreadz, and micro-review site Blippr. Now you can keep up with your friend's 12seconds videos right from TweetDeck and leave your own micro video comment on Blippr reviews.

It's a Micro-world Today Folks!

The latest additions to 12seconds.tv's offerings should be well received by users and fans of the service. Quite frankly, I'm more than excited to be able to use 12seconds.tv from TweetDeck. Let us know what you think about the latest API offerings from 12seconds.tv in our comments section.

"ReadWriteWeb" 5x's Really Fast on 12seconds.tv

MacTyler almost gets there, so close! At the end he slaps himself in the face (that's what the screenshot above is). This was his second attempt, his first is here.

Read Write Web Challenge 2 on 12seconds.tv

A bearded reader called beach makes a hash of it.

read write web challenge (5x fast) on 12seconds.tv

To add your entry, you can either click here for an invite to 12seconds.tv or use Seesmic. We have 500 invites for RWW readers to 12seconds.tv. Unfortunately though, the way the private beta invites are being given out isn't ideal. You have to fill in a brief survey and the invites are emailed out to you. But I did that and I haven't gotten mine yet! So if you'd like to participate and you don't get your invite soon, head over to Seesmic and upload your video there.

Whichever method you use, add the link in the comments below and we'll post the best ones!

Here's mine, via Seesmic:

Even after all these years of practice at saying ReadWriteWeb... but it was late on a Friday night and after a couple of beers ;-)

UPDATE: A few more entrants:

Seesmic founder Loïc Le Meur

mackenzey (maybe not quite fast enough)

RWW x5 fast on 12seconds.tv

pixites (ok this is a little scary)

rww on 12seconds.tv

12seconds.tv is opening up their private alpha services to our audience. The general overview of this video service is that users can record a quick video up to 12 seconds long. You can use either your webcam on your computer or your cellphone to send videos to your 12seconds.tv account. Follow friends, subscribe to their RSS feed to keep up with their videos, and leave feedback on how hilarious their videos are with 12seconds.tv. You can also embed videos in your blog, tag your videos, and connect with your Twitter account to send a "tweet" to your Twitter friends once a video is posted by you. The only downside to the service is that there's no east way to reply to a video, but this will be implemented in the future. My workaround for this technicality is to simply tag the people that I'm replying to.

The latest changes to the service includes:

• Find your Twitter friends on 12seconds.tv


• Video and People search


• Site user interface changes


• New Multiplayer widget to play all the latest updates from your friends

ReadWriteWeb on 12Seconds.tv - 500 Invites

There's a ton of things you can say in 12 seconds. However, if you're going through a block as to how to get started with the service here are two ways to help. Introduce yourself in your first video. This could be both difficult and fun depending on how long your bio usually is. I'd love to hear what you all have to say about yourselves.

The second suggestion is a neat little contest for our ReadWriteWeb audience. We'd like to know if you can say "ReadWriteWeb" 5 times really fast in 12 seconds or less! You can follow me on 12seconds.tv at: http://12seconds.tv/channel/corvida. Tag your videos with 'rww' and we'll be sure to view them. Here's my try-out:

"ReadWriteWeb" 5x's Really Fast on 12seconds.tv

All in all, 12seconds.tv is a great service for creating nifty video contests with friends. You can also use the service to give a quick update to your audience a la Twitter style by sending a video from your cellphone. Whether your shopping for new shoes and want an opinion, or just saw some old lady beat lift a car, catch it and send it to 12seconds.tv on the fly. Let us know what ideas you've come up with and ways you'll be using 12seconds.tv.

We have 500 invites available for the ReadWriteWeb audience. Simply head over to the link below and take a quick 1 question survey to get your invite. Click here for an invite to 12seconds.tv.

"It’s a client for subscribing to, watching and listening to podcasts which can also transcode the content and sync it with a number of portable devices including smartphones," Rupert told Voice Over Times. The ability to sync with a wide range of portable devices was always one of FireAnt's most attractive features. Judging by the screenshot (above), the new Odeo media browser is based directly on the FireAnt software. While it is hard to tell from just a screenshot, to my eyes it looks nearly identical to the last iteration of FireAnt.

The relaunch positions Odeo to compete with companies like Veoh and their VeohTV service and Mefeedia. FireAnt's player has always been very slick, and Odeo still has name recognition as one of the first podcast authorities, so combining the two in the way Odeo plans makes sense. Can Odeo make a comeback? We'll begin to find out next month.