Sky News political editor David Speers talks to News Corporation chairman and CEO Rupert Murdoch about paywalls, politics, and more.

Internet Explorer 6 is certainly not on the credibility list of big names from the Web 2.0 world. It was Digg that earlier hinted at cutting the support for the Web Browser and now it is suspected that YouTube is also phasing out the Browser shortly — a screenshot taken by an IE6 user is pretty much conclusive that the time for the IE6 is up.

“We will be phasing out support for your browser soon. Please upgrade to one of these more modern browsers”

Given the bugs and issues on the site, and the fact that only 5% of users on Digg are using IE 6 — hence causing a minimal 1% of diggs, buries and comments, the website announced that they’ll remove support for Internet Explorer 6.

Following on the same lines as Digg, YouTube will also prefer its developers spending time optimizing the service for newer and better browsers rather than paying attention to the fading Microsoft browser. Google is going to have their efforts concentrated on more “modern browsers” like Chrome, Internet Explorer 8, Firefox 3.5 or Safari.

Totally understandable, don’t you think?

[via TechCrunch]

There is no doubt that only few companies on the Internet experiment success as frequently and with the magnitude, Google does.

Their newest venture makes video downloads from YouTube as easy as mouse click. Launched in a highly limited version for now, the download tab on videos is currently available on some of the videos from President-elect Barack Obama’s ChangeDotGov Channel.
The option allows you to download videos in high-quality MPEG4, H.264 format, making them suitable for iPhone and even tv playback While the option for all users to download YouTube content freely is no small matter, one must note that many Internet addicts already use rip-off software to download these videos.

Despite having the feature regularly at some point in future, many of the videos might still be without the option for obvious copyright reasons.

Meanwhile, hold your horses. There’s no need to get too excited about it, because the experiment of allowing free video downloads could trigger legal hassles in the near future. So better wait and see what they come up with.

[via ArsTechnica]

Bandwidth Blog would like to congratulate the winners of last night’s Crunchies. In attendance to collect awards were Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg, Microsoft chief software architect Ray Ozzie, Amazon CTO Werner Vogels, Google product chief Marissa Mayer, Twitter founders Evan Williams, Biz Stone, and Jack Dorsey, imeem founder Dalton Caldwell, and many more.

In adition to the winners, Y Combinator’s Paul Graham, Seesmic CEO Loic Le Meur, and Mahalo CEO Jason Calacanis also made appearances on stage. The slideshow above gives a feel for the event and the party afterward, which was in the stunning Rotunda of City Hall (thank you, MySpace). Or you can check out people’s reactions on Twitter. Results and video of the ceremony after the jump Read the rest of this entry »

Google I/O ‘08 Keynote: Imagination, Immediacy, and Innovation… and a little glimpse under the hood at Google

Marissa Mayer has been with Google for 9 years, helping to build Google into one of the world’s most popular web services. As the VP of Search and User Experience, her team is behind some of Google’s most popular and successful products including core web search, images, news, books, maps, iGoogle, toolbar, desktop, and health. This talk is a glimpse from inside the trenches of how Google builds products (including practical insights on how to build the best products), how to prioritize your efforts especially under resource constraints, and how to think about strategy.

Feedalizr is a Adobe Air desktop client that allows users to aggregate their Friend Feed account in a neat interface on their desktop. Launched earlier this year by SWAT (Strategic Worldwide Applications & Technologies) a division of Nasper’s MIH Internet, Feedalizr is one of the first quality Adobe Air applications to come out of South Africa.

Feedalizr recently launched their new version with major upgrades to the user interface, Flickr photo drag n drop integration and finally the most interesting feature: Feedalizr Video.

It’s pretty simple, you put your video directly into the Feedalizr application and all your Friend Feed subscribers will see it. Though you can record right from your camera in the applications it has one small drawback: the 30 seconds time limit which may not be enough to capture your entire message.

Some of the things you can do with the Feedalizr desktop application includes:

• Updates for Flickr, Pownce, or Twitter
• Updates filtered by friend,
• Post videos – which is rather seamless, and records right from your cam in the app
• Drag and drop or upload pictures directly to Flickr
• Instant updates

FriendFeed has a public API and Feedalizr seems to be one of the first apps based on the platform. You can follow the Feedalizr staff through their Friend Feed account.

What’s your favorite Adobe AIR app? Drop a link in the comments!

Have you ever thought that there are investors that would spend money to businesses that have a close relationship with God? I have to agree I never did, but GodTube is here to disagree with me.

According to Rafat Ali, GodTube managed to raise $30 million from GLG Partners, a hedge fund. Guess they have a lot of faith in the business model.  GodTube the site that started on a $300 script found lots of people in the US that demand religious programs and exploited it and exploded to the top 1000 websites in September 2007.

Not sure how God and the Internet mix but GodTube is doing nicely and dominates their niche market.

That’s definitely one I would keep my eyes on to see where it’s going.

via Mashable

South Africa’s bloggerati converged in Cape Town last night for this year’s SA Blog Awards. Hosted by Jon Cherry, and with trees as trophies, the evening was an incredibly enjoyable one – for bloggers and digital junkies alike. The Zoopy video features the prize giving and a small segment with predictions from local bloggers Rafiq Phillips, Simone Puterman and Jason Bagley.

Last weeks have been pretty rough for Yahoo! with staff layoffs and takeover bids but they still have some energy to announce that their Yahoo Video service will be relaunched.

There are a lot of changes with many of them appealing a video-demanding user. Files limit has been raised to 150MB, a 16:9 viewer was added, users have better profiles and can use embedable playlists. These are great changes but what I think is going to have the biggest impact is the fact that they’re not limited to user submissions, because they are going to use other Yahoo properties for materials and that include shows, news, TV or movies.

Though they “reinvented” Yahoo Video the battle is fierce because rumors say Google is going to offer live streaming by the end of the year, on YouTube.

What do you guys think? Who will win? - by ALEX ION

Can you spot that one thing women talk at least once a day, every day, every year? I’m telling you, it’s shoes. They seem to have a weird obsession on shoes and I guess that’s the business plan why ShoeTube have launched. It’s a video network that should cover only shoes. They get the technology from twistage and the content is created by Powderhouse Productions.

Though shoes are such a good topic, don’t expect ShoeTube to be flawless. I’ll start with the PROs. The content is going to be very professional including several shows (with hosts) , quality interviews with big names in the industry and lots of blogs. But I get to the CONs right away because from what I’ve seen there is no user interactions other then comments and the forums.

What to be done?

Well they should put themselves in the shoes of their users. If I enjoy one video very much I would gladly share it with other members on the site or maybe embed it on my own blog. The site is missing interaction and shareability.

These features are not yet available but I’m sure ShoeTube is attentive and will correct it sooner or later because have had a great idea. They just need to become 100-percent web2.0.