Ages ago I signed up to be a beta tester for a service called Swaptree. I finally received my invite last month, and at long last signed on last night. (The beta is public as of July 4th, so you can try it out yourself.) The premise of Swaptree is simple. You list books, movies, games and music that you’re willing to trade and then browse for items you’d like to get in exchange.

I set up my Swaptree account by typing in the ISBN numbers of 9 books I have and got a list of 176 items that I could potentially receive in a trade. These included 143 books, 18 CDs, 8 video games and 7 DVDs. Not bad. I initiated one trade and now I’m sitting back to see what happens.

The service is drop-dead simple and I can see how it might get addictive. However, it does have a few quirks.

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I’ve drooled over Final Cut Pro for years, but unfortunately in this lifetime I don’t have enough hours to learn the software, much less use it on a regular basis. So, I’m thrilled with the fact that there are now a bunch of Web apps that make video editing exceedingly quick and easy. YouTube is of course the latest to offer such a tool with its addition of Adobe’s Remixer app. I tried it out and was initially all set to sing YouTube’s praises. Unfortunately, the published version of my first remixed video looked nothing like the very-promising preview. The basic editing cuts worked, but the transitions I’d added in were gone.

Wondering how other people had fared, I decided to check out the comments on YouTube’s blog post about its site updates. Ouch. There are a bunch of very unhappy people out there. A few people mentioned having trouble with the editing features (audio problems, text rendering issues, problems with graphics, etc.), but far more people wrote to say they are having trouble with other parts of the site that worked fine before. That plus the fact that YouTube has added a “Videos Being Watched Now” section to its front page that seems to highlight ass shots and outright porn, makes me wonder what YouTube was thinking. (more…)

If you scroll down TechMeme today past all the news about Microsoft’s surface computing concept (way cool), you’ll land on several articles about CBS’s acquisition of Last.fm. I have a very selfish reason for finding this interesting. If Last.fm warrants a buy-out by CBS (to to the tune of $280M), maybe that means Pandora will survive. The way I figure it, either someone with a large bankroll picks it up to compete with CBS, or, preferably, legislators finally recognize just how valuable Pandora-like services are and shut down the CRB’s plans to impose unworkable royalty fees.

Okay, probably just wishful thinking. Please don’t take away my Pandora.

There was a fair bit of conversation at the recent Cable IPTV conference around how Comcast is approaching competition from online video services. Part of the approach involves having its own online video destination, (see news about the upcoming launch of Fancast), and the other part involves using the Internet to push subscribers to cable TV services. The launch of Comcast’s TVplanner definitely falls under that second category.

The functionality is simple (and non-revolutionary) and therefore extremely easy to use. Plug in your zip code, select your television service and voila! Up comes your TV guide. Next Comcast will undoubtedly add a feature for programming your DVR to record the shows you find. Off the Internet you go and back on to the cable TV network.

Long Zheng has uncovered a Microsoft trademark application Down Under:

Computer software for delivery of broadcast-quality video and television programming over broadband, cable, satellite and wireless networks; computer software for providing video-on-demand services; downloadable films and TV programs provided via video-on-demand; computer software for transmitting personal photos, video and music over broadband, cable, satellite and wireless networks; computer software for digital video recording; and computer software for providing a programming guide to display available video and television broadcasts and downloads

Wonder what this could be? One could suggest a Silverlight Joost killer, but Joost isn’t established yet. Is this even something new or a rebranding Microsoft’s IPTV platform or Media Center experience? Could it have anything to do with my beloved Xbox 360? Hmmm… What’s Chris Lanier’s take? Does Sean Alexander know anything about this?

Anyone else worried about what online HD streaming from ABC is going to do to Internet connection speeds?

Multichannel News reports that ABC is claiming to be the first major TV programmer to stream HDTV online. The network will start its HD test in July with content (full episodes?) from Lost, Desperate Housewives, Grey’s Anatomy, and Ugly Betty. Broadcasting and Cable adds an interesting note that ABC is not detailing what bit-rate it will use to compress the HD video.

Um, bandwidth issues anyone?

On Monday, Digeo announced that in Q4 they’ll offer MSOs a new Moxi HD set-top box with CableCARD support allowing them to comply with the FCC’s separable security mandate. They hope to sell these to cable-cos (i.e. Charter) at 1/3 the price of their current boxes. Some features:

• Moxi 4.1 software improvements including faster rendering time, time forward feature and hard drive storage meter
• Remote web-based scheduling
• Built-in support for Multi-stream CableCARD (M-Card) with two-way capability
• The ability to record two simultaneous HD video streams: up to 16 hours of HD MPEG2 video, and up to 160 hours of standard-definition video on the 160GB hard drive
• External hard drive support, allowing provisioned subscribers to increase their storage to 1 terabyte
• Interoperability with both Motorola and Scientific-Atlanta-based cable plants

Additionally, an OCAP software port of Moxi will also be made available at this time which could obviously be tweaked to run on a variety of hardware platforms.

Not to be forgotten in this announcement, Digeo still intends to release two DVRs into retail later this year… which may be related to a current interface usability study. Speaking of which, I quizzed my Digeo PR contact on the request for help and he responded:

As any company with a strong customer focus does, Digeo is very interested in listening to its customers in order to improve future versions of its products. The company plans to integrate the feedback it receives into future product planning and development efforts. Digeo continues to be on track to deliver both the retail and cable- industry versions of Moxi that it has announced in recent months,
during the latter part of 2007.