Overlay.TV, a startup that lets users augment streaming videos with customized text, audio, images, and links, has launched to the public. The service overlays videos from a number of video sharing sites with a new layer containing this customized content, which can be used for entertainment purposes or as an easy (and potentially effective) means of monetizing video.

To use Overlay.TV, you first give the site the source URL of the video you’d like to modify. Overlay then streams this video from the original host (the site doesn’t host any video content, so it shouldn’t have to worry about the copyright violations that plague sites like YouTube). After loading the video, users are free to add their own content as part of a new layer with options that include text, links, custom images, and clip art. The site includes some basic timeline functionality, so you can set specific times for each item to fade in or out, but it can be hard to finetune the position and timing of each element.

]]> http://www.webdatasource.com/2008/09/overlaytv-helps-you-customize-monetize-streaming-video/feed/ 0 http://www.webdatasource.com/2008/09/greenseng-a-green-search-engine-that-actually-conserves-energy/ http://www.webdatasource.com/2008/09/greenseng-a-green-search-engine-that-actually-conserves-energy/#comments Tue, 02 Sep 2008 23:03:30 +0000 Jason Kincaid http://www.techcrunch.com/?p=21683 We've seen a few sites attempt to help turn the web green, but most of them have been little more than gimmicks. Blackle purports to conserve energy by offering a "black" version of Google, which it says uses less energy than the engine's standard white. But Google has gone on to say that black may actually increase the amount of energy consumed by visitors (of course, this didn't stop Google Israel from turning its site black in honor of Earth Hour). Today, Y Combinator startup CO2Stats has launched a search engine that aspires to be truly green. Greenseng (sounds like Ginseng) is a standard search engine, pulling results from Google's Custom Search to produce results. But instead of relying on a dubious method of energy conservation, CO2Stats measures the amount of energy used by its servers and the computers of its users and purchases renewable energy certificates (similar to carbon credits) to offset the environmental toll. ]]>

We’ve seen a few sites attempt to help turn the web green, but most of them have been little more than gimmicks. Blackle purports to conserve energy by offering a “black” version of Google, which it says uses less energy than the engine’s standard white. But Google has gone on to say that black may actually increase the amount of energy consumed by visitors (of course, this didn’t stop Google Israel from turning its site black in honor of Earth Hour).

Today, Y Combinator startup CO2Stats has launched a search engine that aspires to be truly green. Greenseng (sounds like Ginseng) is a standard search engine, pulling results from Google’s Custom Search to produce results. But instead of relying on a dubious method of energy conservation, CO2Stats measures the amount of energy used by its servers and the computers of its users and purchases renewable energy certificates (similar to carbon credits) to offset the environmental toll.

CO2Stats CTO Alex Wissner-Gross says that Greenseng isn’t meant to generate revenue though advertising. Instead, the site is using proceeds from its certification business that allows websites to purchase renewable energy certificates in return for a badge that labels them as “Green Certified”.

But while Greenseng may not directly be earning any money, it may help CO2Stats pull in a slew of new customers. In its next iteration, the site will be using Yahoo’s powerful BOSS search API to incorporate some of its own data. Users will be able to see the environmental footprint of each site in their search results with data pulled from CO2Stats, which may give companies more of an incentive to get Green Certified.

]]> http://www.webdatasource.com/2008/09/greenseng-a-green-search-engine-that-actually-conserves-energy/feed/ 0 http://www.webdatasource.com/2008/08/can-we-predict-the-outcome-of-the-presidential-election-with-each-candidates-traffic-data/ http://www.webdatasource.com/2008/08/can-we-predict-the-outcome-of-the-presidential-election-with-each-candidates-traffic-data/#comments Thu, 28 Aug 2008 23:55:43 +0000 Jason Kincaid http://www.techcrunch.com/?p=21542 Can traffic to a Presidential Candidate's homepage be used to gauge who will win this year's election? Hitwise has published recent data on the traffic both American presidential candidates have seen in the last month (ending 8/23), and while the results don't seem to shed much light on the forthcoming election's outcome, they reveal a few interesting trends. Hitwise has ranked each state by two criteria: its contribution to each site's total traffic, and the the overall likelihood that a user in the state will visit the candidate's site (called the Representation index). If either metric is applicable to the election, it will be Representation Index, which indicates the candidate's popularity on a per-state basis and isn't affected by the state's population.]]>

Can traffic to a Presidential Candidate’s homepage be used to gauge who will win this year’s election? Hitwise has published recent data on the traffic both American presidential candidates have seen in the last month (ending 8/23), and while the results may not shed much light on the forthcoming election’s outcome, they reveal a few interesting trends.

Hitwise has ranked each state by two criteria: its contribution to each site’s total traffic, and the the overall likelihood that a user in the state will visit the candidate’s site (called the Representation index). If either metric is applicable to the election, it will be Representation Index, which indicates the candidate’s popularity on a per-state basis and isn’t affected by the state’s population.

Unsurprisingly, California represents the most traffic share for both candidates, accounting for 13% of Obama’s total traffic and 12% of McCain’s. But both candidates have also seen a similar Representation Index from the state, which means that a similar number of Californians have visited each site. Given the state’s Democratic history, this is surprising – apparently Californians are interested in learning about the opposition. Conversely, in left-leaning New York, McCain’s site has only seen about half as much traffic as Obama’s.

NewsCred, the news aggregator that ranks stories by the credibility of their source, has launched to the public. Instead of relying on popularity as many social news sites do, NewsCred instead allows users to rate each story, author, and publication’s credibility, which is then plugged into an algorithm to determine the site’s prominent headlines.

Technorati Profile

We originally introduced the site last May when it launched in private alpha. Since then, NewsCred has implemented a number of new features, including a more thorough search, topic-specific pages, and a section for breaking news.

My biggest criticism when I first reviewed the site was the apparently weak implementation of the credibility algorithm, or even the viability of creating one in the first place. Credibility is very difficult to measure, and can often be misleading. News organizations that break news may be less accurate, as tips aren’t always reliable. But is a news source that simply rehashes established information really a better alternative? The site has responded to these issues, among others, by implementing its breaking news section and tweaking its algorithm, but it is still a work in progress.

Because the site has remained private until now, the credibility scores at launch aren’t particularly meaningful, which makes it hard to judge how effective the system will be. But even if the credibility rankings turn out to be ineffective, NewsCred could still be a success. The site offers a clean and intuitive news aggregator that will appeal to users who may not be fond of traditional RSS readers. Similar offerings (that rely on different recommendation systems) include Regator and Socialmedian.

The other nugget of information found in the video is that the game is running on OTOY, the 3D engine that renders graphics in the cloud. The technology allows relatively weak computers (or even mobile phones) to display incredibly detailed graphics comparable to those seen in Hollywood movies.

The video shows a massive virtual city filled with towering skyscrapers, parks, user-customized apartments and houses, public meeting places, subways, and everything else you might expect in a metropolitan area, all beautifully rendered by the OTOY engine. The game also features impressive real time lighting, reflection, and weather effects that rival those seen in detailed 3D games (and even some movies).

At this point it appears that gameplay will be focused on human avatars, who can own their own living spaces and offices, buy and sell goods at a virtual mall, and interact with each other in public places.

While there are a number of online games that offer impressive graphics (though none of this caliber), the real potential behind LivePlace and the OTOY engine is the cloud-based rendering engine, which allows games on almost any computer to play without needing a powerful graphics card. OTOY has been developed to work in any browser without a plugin, which makes the barrier for entry into this virtual world much lower than Second Life. Of course, we have no idea when City Space will actually launch, so it’s far to early to hail it as the second coming of social online worlds.

Barack Obama’s campaign has posted a blog post announcing the launch of its official account on Scribd, the online document repository. The page, which can be accessed at http://scribd.com/barackobama, will serve as a resource for documents related to Obama’s policy, along with official statements.

Y Combinator-funded Scribd is a “YouTube for documents” that allows users to upload an array of filetypes that are converted to a Flash format viewable on most computers. The document viewer, called iPaper, can also be embedded in web pages. Since its launch in 2007, Scribd has seen explosive growth, and now claims to see nearly 20 million monthly unique visitors.

Scribd’s inclusion in the Obama campaign isn’t surprising given the candidate’s adoption of web-centric services like Twitter (his official account has over 52,000 followers). In contrast, opposing candidate John McCain has admitted to not being particularity tech savvy, though as we noted in our endorsements for the candidates, his policies will matter far more than what web 2.0 services he’s fond of.

SearchCloud, a new search engine that launched on July 17, has a new take on search refinement that it hopes will make it a useful alternative to the likes of Yahoo and Google. Instead of simply entering multiple keywords, users can rank how important each term is to the search. Each term is placed in a “search cloud”, where its weight is indicated by the size of the font.

For example, you could enter the words “TechCrunch” and “Apple” with TechCrunch more strongly weighted to (hopefully) get articles about Apple on our site. To further refine the search, you could enter terms like “iphone” and “app store” with a lesser weighting, which would help stories on those topics rise to the top, without excluding stories that don’t mention them.