Do you have an idea for a widget or Facebook app? Maybe you either don't have the time or the full knowledge to actually make it?
You reallllly want to make Wolverines vs. Dracula Part 8 for Facebook, and it frustrates you. Well be frustrated no more, in steps Zembly.
As you know, companies have been formed around building Facebook apps, some of them have become wildly successful AND profitable. Now it's our turn.
Zembly is funded by Sun Microsystems and targets easy creation of applications for Facebook, OpenSocial, meebo, and other social platforms. Not to mention, they're blowing open the barrier to entry on creating these things, and starting a community around doing just that.
Today, Zembly has opened a private beta of their site which lets you very easily create widgets and apps in your browser. Check out their blog for more details.
It's hard to get by with just one chat client these days. Your contacts aren't likely to be limited to a single service, like Google Talk, MSN Live or AIM, so a multi-chat client is a must. Now the multi-chat experience is about to get a lot better for AIM's 27.8 million users, with the launch of AOL's Open AIM 2.0 initiative.
Open AIM will aid the developers of clients like Meebo and eBuddy by releasing documentation for OSCAR, the protocol that the official AIM client uses to connect to the service. Open source libraries are now allowed to access the AIM network, and developers are free to create mobile or corporate versions of AIM to their heart's content, and AIM will now all kinds of widgets and plugins.
What does this mean for users? For one, some of the compatibility issues with third-party clients might finally go away -- file transfer is the one that's always been a sore spot for us. AOL is promising access to AIM's voice and video capabilities, too. Keep an eye out for updates to your favorite chat client, because the devs are likely working at full speed to add new features under Open AIM.
Tangler is a web service that lets anyone create a pretty nifty discussion forum. It takes just a few seconds to sign up and create a forum which you can then invite your friends to participate in. But the word forum doesn't really do justice to Tangler.
Sure, you can create topics and respond to comments left by other users in each topic in the forum. But unlike old fashioned forums or bulletin boards, Tangler updates its forums automatically. No page refreshing required. So a Tangler forum is really more like a cross between a traditional forum and an instant messenger, complete with buttons for embedding images, links, and online videos in your comments.
Now Tangler has added the ability for users to embed a forum topic on any web page. You can't embed the entire forum, just a single thread. But this can come in handy if you want to add an enhanced comments section to a particular blog post. Say you want to let people comment on your latest podcast, or live-blogging an event. Wouldn't it be nice if people could leave comments and respond to other users' comments in real-time?
Effectively, an embedded Tangler topic works much like a Meebo chat room which you can also embed on any web page. The difference is that an embedded Tangler topic is part of a larger forum which you can direct visitors to in order to participate in conversations on other topics.
You can check out a demo Tangler topic after the jump.
Meebo, the online instant messaging platform with support for multiple protocols, has just released the API for meebo rooms and meebo network.
Meebo rooms are customizable spaces that integrate instant messaging with the sharing of web links and media, including videos and images. The meebo rooms API was created for large-scale implementations of meebo rooms for bigger community sites. The API also automates a large portion of the creation and configuration of meebo rooms.
Examples of implementation include:
embedding a chat room on every "group" page of a social network
live community groups for an artist or show
a chat room in the "comments" section of a blog.
So why do all this? Two words: Muh-knee.
Each meebo room built with the API will run ads, and meebo will share 50% of the ad revenue with its partners (if you dry heave at the idea of an ad-supported meebo room, a yearly licensing fee option is also available).
In January alone, 18 million unique users visited meebo widgets distributed across the Web by partners and users. So if you're looking to monetize your website, meebo rooms and widgets might be the way to go.
If your name is SpeedDate.com, here's a great idea for a PR stunt: Mix 8 celebrity bloggers and a SpeedDate.com session, bake at 400 degrees, record, and release the highlight reel on YouTube. That's exactly what happened in conjunction with Meebo to advertise Meebo's new SpeedDate app.
Perhaps one of the funniest moments of the video is when Aaron Rowe of wired asks Justine of iJustine.TV, "Why? Would you like to come over and play doctor?" Although we'll admit you didn't have much time, try taking it a bit slower next time, Aaron. They can smell desperation -- even across the internet.
For those unfamiliar with Meebo.com, the site is a browser based instant messaging service for AIM, Google Talk, Yahoo IM, and more. The SpeedDate.com app on Meebo allows users to participate in SpeedDate sessions through Meebo.
Yahoo! appears to be working on a new social networking/chat service. MyM is in private beta at the moment, so we can't tell you much about it, but Silicon Valley gossip rag Valleywag reports that the service could be some sort of web-based instant messenger that will tie in with other social sites including Facebook, Friendster, MySpace, LiveJournal, and competing IM services including AIM, MSN Messenger, and Meebo.
We'd say the whole thing doesn't make a lot of sense, except we don't really know enough about the service to condemn it yet. When you sign up for email notification of future myM news, you're asked what social networks and chat clients you use. While Valleywag surmises that this means myM will tie in with those services, it's also possible that Yahoo! just wants to know how you use the internet.
Still, as long as we're in the realm of speculation here, we're going to make a wild guess that myM will be a Yahoo! branded web-based instant messaging widget that you'll be able to add to various social networking sites or your personal blog. But until someone sends us an invite, we'll never really know. Hint hint.
About a month ago Meebo announced they had a new third party development platform. With it, developers can create multi user applications where users can connect to each other. Now the fun starts rolling out, starting with games.
With over 200 registered developers, Meebo has pushed out 20 multiplayer games and made them available for users to play through the online instant messaging platform. Some head to head challenging games include Backgammon, Checkers, Chess, Connect4, Sudoku wars and Texas Hold'em, making the online messaging location even more tempting to use and replace current standard IM's with.
Although gaming is just a start, the next round of Meebo platform categories include shopping, productivity, work applications, music and video.
Meebo, the web-based instant messaging service, has announced that they will be powering Channel Chat across Joost's internet video platform.
Joost provides over 15000 shows from 250 Channels. Meebo will allow anyone watching a show or channel to chat with other viewers, or to chat with people with the same viewing tastes.
Meebo has just announced a new platform for their messaging system. This allows for third party developers to create applications based on the growing chat service.
The Meebo development platform launched with a set of API's that developers can grab in order to create multi user applications that Meebo users can specifically use to connect with each other. The question users must answer before the build, "I want to ______ with you. Before development begins, Meebo requires applications to be registered complete with title of application, descriptions and author's names. Special instructions and a key will then be sent out to get connected to the database. When the build is complete using either the supplied Flash or JavaScript starter files, applications will be tested in a sandbox environment before they are released to Meebo users. Developers aren't left in the shadows, Meebo will be selling advertising on the applications, and will be splitting revenue 50/50.
The two year old company is moving into the big time fast with their communication platform. They have also announced some big partnerships that allow video/audio calls (TokBox), voice chat (Pudding Media), group calling (TalkShoe), and live TV show streaming (UStream).
Imo.Im is a web based instant messaging service, from former Google employees, that lets you IM your friends from various IM clients, such as AIM, Google Talk, MSN, and Yahoo Messenger. This aggregator service is similar to Meebo and e-buddy.
Now that's all well and good, but they just added video chat to really get the party going. Now you can video chat with your friends using a web cam with just one click via an invite button. You can also do a three way chat with the first two chatters each opening a separate window with the third party.
Another feature sure to be the ultimate party starter, is Imo's group chat, which lets you chat across multiple IM clients, although this feature is still under development.
Imo.Im was launched in April and its creators are fomer employees of Google. It has about 70,000 users.
Meebo, the web-based instant messaging application that runs across all major IM networks has released a Firefox add-on giving users a browser sidebar for easy chatting.
The Meebo Firefox add-on makes it much easier to chat with friends while browsing online. No more switching from application to application or from the Meebo homepage to the page browsing. The sidebar gives users a visual notification, the side pane pops open, when contacts send you an instant message. No more pasting links and uploading and sending images either, the add-on allows for dragging and dropping links and images right onto contacts you wish to send them to.
It would be nice to have all actions take place in the sidebar, but one drawback with the new add-on is that when IMs are sent and received you are instantly booted to a Meebo Firefox tab that must keep open at all times in order to remain signed in. Meebo's line of web based IM tools include Meebo; a web based IM for all networks and MeeboMe; a way to chat with people directly from a website.
Pretty much every major chat client includes a way to transfer files along with instant messages. If you're using AOL, MSN, or Yahoo! instant messenger to catch up with a friend and want to send a photo or MP3, you can. But if you're using web-based IM client meebo, it's been a different story... until now.
Meebo has just rolled out an update that includes a few new emoticons, and oh yeah, support for transferring files. Don't expect to send huge videos over the service though. There's a 10MB size limit on files you transfer, and a 30MB per user limit per month.
Meebo is using Amazon's S3 storage service and EC2 scaling service to facilitate file transfers. So don't expect those file size limits to go away anytime soon. But this is definitely a step in the direction of making Meebo a complete replacement for desktop-based instant messaging clients.
With so many new things happening for the iPhone everyday it can be tough to keep up with everything. Here at Download Squad we're here to help. Every Friday we're going to start giving you iPhone Addicts out there a rundown of everything that's happened for the iPhone in the past seven days. This weeks iPhone news includes:
What IM do you use? Google Talk and Meebo have been growing with leaps and bounds, and so has IMVU.
Meebo, the online instant messaging system has experienced growth rates of 354% in the past ten months, and Google Talk, both web based and desktop based, has grown 149%. IMVU is another Instant messaging application that you might use if you are a Second Life of Habbo fan. It lets users create a custom virtual characters complete with clothes and 3D scenes. They have experienced a 154% since last year.
A shocking result came from Skype. The eBay owned company saw only a 20% increase in users since last August.
Web-based instant messaging startup Meebo has just upped the game with a new Meebo Rooms feature. Meebo's basic service acts like a web-based version of Trillian or Pigin IM, allowing users to chat with anyone on AOL, MSN, Google Talk or Yahoo! Messenger.
But Meebo Rooms lets you create chat rooms that can not only be seen on Meebo's site, but which can also be embedded onto your own website. You can customize the theme of the chat room, and users can join whether they have Meebo accounts or not.
Probably the coolest feature is support for embedded video. If you post a link to an online video from YouTube that video will be embedded in the chat window, allowing every user to watch. Each room can hold up to 80 users at a time.
Check out a little Download Squad chat room we made after the jump.
About a month ago 
With so many new things happening for the 
