OpenSocial now comes standard on Your Own Social Network for Anything on Ning, which means that anyone can now create their own social network for free and add OpenSocial applications to that network in just a few seconds.


For every social network created on the Ning Platform, members are able to browse through a branded directory of OpenSocial applications to add to their profile pages with a single click. Today at launch, each social network on Ning offers over 25 OpenSocial applications from which to choose, including file sharing from Box.net, poll creation from Polldaddy and e-commerce from Shopit.

OpenSocial is now live across our more than 500,000 social networks this morning. This release replaces and improves NING's older “Gadgets” beta functionality, and enables Network Creators and their members to add all sorts of great new features, or Applications, to their profile pages with a single click.

In the coming months, there plan on expanding OpenSocial on your own social networks on Ning to allow applications to be placed on network main pages, and we'll also be rolling out v0.8 with support for the OpenSocial REST Protocol.

Here are a few other features of Ning's launch to highlight:

* On Ning, you define the visual style of your network. Every social network created on Ning has an OpenSocial directory by default. The directory automatically takes on the branding and visual design of the network.
* With support for gadgets.skins, OpenSocial applications on Ning can inherit the visual style of the member's profile page to which it's added. This is one area where Ning is unique from other general one-size-fits-all social networks, and Ning's OpenSocial applications are unique too.
* Every OpenSocial application is automatically integrated into the viral loops on your social network on Ning. The ability for OpenSocial applications to write to a member's latest activity feed, send messages on behalf of the member (via requestSendMessage) and spread using a network's default viral sharing options are there by default.

Youtube for videos ...bluetunes for audios

With Bluetunes u can directly upload your mp3 and listen it any time streaming

BlueTunes is a new service that allows you to upload your own music and then stream it from anywhere you have an internet connection. This has been tried before and the companies were abruptly stopped and then sued by the RIAA. This new service is differentiating itself by only allowing you to stream the music you first upload to its site.

It’s not the first time users could upload their music to the cloud and listen to it anywhere. Michael Robertson’s MP3.com tried it in 2000 and was promptly sued for copyright infringement. They lost, shut down the service and settled for $200 million.

Robertson was back in 2005 with a different take on the service called MP3Tunes. EMI sued MP3Tunes as well, but isn’t doing so well in court this time around.

The reason MP3.com lost the suit was because users weren’t actually uploading songs. Instead, they simply put a CD in their drive to prove they owned it (or at least had it for a few minutes). MP3.com, which already had a copy of all songs on its servers, then gave the users access to the songs online. Great idea, but the courts said no way.

MP3Tunes, by contrast, makes users actually upload every song they want to listen to online. Back in 2005 I tried the service and gave up after repeated crashes, but other people have said the service works fine. Still, in a time when you can listen to virtually any recorded song legally and for free on MySpace Music, Last.fm and iMeem, going to all the trouble of uploading those songs seems like a bit of a waste of time.

BlueTunes is opting for the MP3.com-type model. They say they have a “next generation uploader (patent pending)” that uploads songs “in a fraction of the time that it would normally take.” But the secret behind the upload is that songs aren’t really being uploaded if someone else has already done it.

This sounds like a great idea if you need more space for your music and a quick backup solution. The question is, will this be shut down and will there be any repercussions to its users. It looks like they have covered all of their bases so why not use it while it is here.

After the official release of VLC media player 0.9.2 its now the turn of VLC skin editor. Just edit and chosse your skin. The VLC Skin Editor aims at giving designers an easy opportunity to create skins for the VLC Media Player. Until now skin designers had to have knowledge of the VLC Skins2 XML System to create their skins. Now they have an easy alternative: The WYSIWYG VLC Skin Editor.

The program is still under development and is fully compatible to VLC 0.9.0. Note that it uses some features that are not supported by VLC 0.8.6c and older. You can download it here

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The HRD ministry is planning to launch Bharatpedia, a collaborative online encyclopaedia like Wikipedia.

Primarily for students and the teaching community, Bharatpedia will be part of the National Mission in Education through ICT in the 11th Plan.

Sources said the name Bharatpedia was coined by HRD officials as they felt that since the encyclopaedia was
being developed in India, it should be called something that would evoke instant association.

A senior official said, "Work on Bharatpedia is going on. It will have content for college students as well as others. It can be edited, updated and corrected just like Wikipedia entries. But it is aimed mainly at the teaching community."

It will also have e-books in English for most subjects. "Launching an encyclopaedia is the next step after we started online portal Sakshat," the official added. Source