One of the moves that has made YouTube successful is the ability to embed YouTube videos on any site. Now YouTube is going a few steps further and giving web developers tools that will let users upload and edit YouTube videos from any web page.
What that means is you can essentially build a web page that lets visitors upload videos of kittens and puppies doing cute things, send video responses to one another, edit their video metadata, and never ever have to click through to YouTube, even though all of the transcoding and file hosting is taking place on a Google server.
Web developers can also customize the look and feel of the YouTube video player using a new Javascript API.
LinkedIn's new focus seems like an effort to emulate what Facebook has had with outside web applications. The new LinkedIn beta homepage provides customizable modules that display network updates in a dashboard format. This allows users to potentially be more productive by showing what contacts are up to, what news is most important to colleagues and questions and answers from your specific industry with the use of familiar feeds. But why stop there?
People that do business together and are connected via outside interests could possibly do a lot more on the site if more personal based modules were available. However, this is just the beginning of a component that is part of Google's OpenSocial developer platform so we will have to wait and see what becomes of it.
Nonetheless it's great to see that LinkedIn is growing...mind you slowly, and cautiously building upon their platform. Will it manage to pull back business users that slipped away to Facebook for more personal networking with these developments? Could it possibly ever attract younger users?
Yahoo! has launched an updated version of the Yahoo! Widget Engine and gallery. Yahoo! Widget Engine 4.5 has the same look and feel on your desktop as version 4.0, but there are some changes in the way widgets are created and organized.
First, Yahoo! has retooled its online widget gallery to give you more information about what each widget does. Users now also have a quick view of the most downloaded, highest rated and newest widgets, and can share Widgets directly with friends on IM, email, a Yahoo! Widget badge, del.icio.us, Digg and Reddit.
Second, there's now support for Flash and HTML based widget design. Yahoo! has also teamed up with the NBA to vote on All Stars, RockYou to create and watch slideshows on the desktop, and the Netvibes UWA will now be available as a Yahoo! Desktop Widget from the Netvibes Ecosystem. And if you still aren't satisfied, Yahoo! Finance has also improved their powerful stock Widget.
Check out a screeenshot of the new RockYou Yahoo! Widget after the jump.
FreshBooks rolled out their API yesterday, a little early it seems as they were outed by TechCrunch.
FreshBooks is an online tool that users can create, send and manage invoices, track time and accept payments with. This new API will allow developers and businesses to integrate the FreshBooks billing platform into a variety of services and solutions they may offer, allowing for a little streamlining to take place.
The FreshBooks API support materials include an update blog, scripts, samples and examples. There is also a forum to guide developers along the way in creating their timers, planners, and widgets.
The iPhone isn't even out yet and there are scheduled conferences, iPhone specific applications and now an iPhone developer's platform.
A company called Morfik has created a platform that will give developers the ability to build applications on Apple's new iPhone. This new platform is said to be the first of its kind, and usually the first ones to market hit it big with consumers. Morfik has said that its WebOS AppsBuilder will be able to make web applications that are optimized for Safari running on iPhones. Don't have a technically included background? Morfik will also enable everyday users a way to make their own AJAX powered web applications with writing any code.
BEA Systems, known for its leading enterprise infrastructure software, is getting set to launch its suite of corporate search and collaboration products. These three new applications look ready to help businesses with some Web 2.0 technologies including RSS feeds, tagging, and mashup platforms. Hey, enterprise business, here's your chance to roughly equal the kind of community building web interfaces that 20 somethings are pumping out from their basements.
Although integration efforts have been extremely slow for many businesses, it will be interesting to watch the effects these different integration options have with a number of useful 2.0 applications.
So this may a little off our beaten path (no pun intended), but Nike has redone their site using Adobe's Flash platform. This is the first major re-load of Nike.com since 1999 when it opened its web doors and welcomed you to "just do web it." Many of you are Nike fans, but even if you aren't, it is worth checking out the sweet effects Nike has going for them. Mostly the site consists of a Apple-like essence that includes a dual-angle top and bottom wet-floor video effect that really gives you the feeling that you are in a room with shiny walls, floor and ceiling. This new idea organizes the Nike universe well and makes everything easy to access. Maybe there is more to this Adobe Flash stuff than we all thought. I always knew it was something special, I don't know about you. The site was done by a real pro, and it looks great.
LinkedIn, the professional networking site, has released new features, including a homepage redesign and developer platform. Sure this is going to be a little more useful to business users, but does LinkedIn need to expand and focus outside the business sector to make things stickier? 
FreshBooks rolled out their API yesterday, a little early it seems as they were outed by TechCrunch.
The iPhone isn't even out yet and there are scheduled conferences, iPhone specific applications and now an iPhone developer's platform.
BEA Systems, known for its leading enterprise infrastructure software, is getting set to launch its suite of corporate search and collaboration products. These three new applications look ready to help businesses with some Web 2.0 technologies including RSS feeds, tagging, and mashup platforms. Hey, enterprise business, here's your chance to roughly equal the kind of community building web interfaces that 20 somethings are pumping out from their basements. 
