Popular websites such as MySpace, YouTube, Yahoo, Google and soon also Microsoft’s MSN are featuring user-generated videos that quickly have become a phenomenal form of entertainment. YouTube, the leading video site that helped catapult the genre with its public launch in December, attracted more than 20 million visitors in May. The company says it averages 50,000 new video uploads per day.

The explosion in online video-sharing sites, where clips of any nature can be easily uploaded for the world to see, has become the latest challenge for parents trying to protect their children and for websites coping with obscene submittals.

What do you think? I think that with the internet, whether on free homemade videos, blogs, or just regular website, it’s impossible to ward obscenities off children and we’ve know that for a while, so why are they fussing? Do they have to fuss every time a new technology emerges?

Skype released a skypecasts, which gives you the ability to host up to 100 people and have control as a moderator… you can control mute, reject and microphone pass! This should be very relevant for those doing podcasts…

However, you can not still record conversations with skype, unless you use third party plug-ins to achieve that… unlike Project Gizmo that has it as a built-in feature…

Take me to skypecasts…

This is amazing, who would like to have a fiber optic cable connection in his house? Well I’d love to have a 20Mb connection at home and use it for HDTV, VoIP and browsing.

In 1999, when I was a student in Amman, I read an article in a Jordanian newspaper that there was a plan to build a fiber optic network all over Amman within 10 years, it made me laugh hard. Anyway, here it is! What will it be used for, how much would it cost etc. is the question, lets just wait and see.

This month at toot we have good news and bad news, lets start with the good news.
Wael, toot’s designer, just had his first baby girl, Joon. She is cute, don’t you think?
The bad news is that Jad, our geek at toot, had to go into surgery for his dislocated shoulder, the poor guy will have to stay at home tied for 5 weeks! (or maybe he’s lucky :p)

Mabrouk Wael and Salamat Jad.

Well technorati is great, no doubt. But there are new entrants to the market who are claim to have smarter ways to search the web. I have visited their websites, and they seem shaky for me with the exception of wink which I started to like more than technorati! Check out the list below. You may have a different view.

Wink (quite solid)
Kaboodle (interesting concept).
Loomia (heavy depending on recommendations)
Riya (very interesting. I think they were intreviewed on Gillmor Gang.)
eurekster
Sphere (in limited PRIVATE beta)

Steve Gillmor of Gillmor Gang (he also has a Gillmore daily) is probably the biggest believer in web 2.0 and web apps as being the future of computing. He would host a Microsoft developer and say it on his face: “MS Office is dead”! Steve would always support his argument with examples like writely. I would add NumSum and gOffice, maybe also Kiko.

Today TechCrunch has an exclusive coverage by Nik Cubrilovic on Salesforce business mashups. AppExchange is the application platform of Salesforce, which includes a large number of application. Of course, it includes applications that can talk to your Outlook and other standard known applications. But the news today is that writely has been included within the AppExchange platform! Other applications that were added include Adobe online PDF generator (which I recall works only for US users), Skype and Google Maps.

So is it really happening! Is MS Office going to die soon, or basically dead by now! Of course, we have Office 12 on the way. I have seen Office 12, and it looks much better. They basically gave it a fabulous facelift. But the significance of Salesforce adopting writely is that the best arguments against people who believe MS Office is dead are to corporate users being not so sure about putting their work online. Well, now with Salesforce adopting writely, those arguments may become history. Of course, Salesforce is another example of web apps, which is extremely successful. I would say the information on Salesforce is more sensitive than a .doc files.

Personally, I would still prefer using MS Office or any offline app as opposed to something like writely. But if the world becomes more connected to the internet; more wifi access and faster internet, then I would consider the shift.

Related links:
Dabble DB
Rallypoint
Zoho
Form Assembly
Mosuki
Calender Hub (boring name!)
Skobee
zvents