Fruitcast is a new service that is not only great for advertisers, but podcasters as well. The founder of Fruitcast, James Archer of Forty Media, saw a problem when it comes to making money with podcasting. You cannot simply connect Google AdSense to a podcast and make money from it, it just doesn’t happen. He came to realize that there just weren’t any services offering “advertising made simple” for podcasters, so he had set out to create his own. I had a talk with James about Fruitcast and how it works on both ends, the podcasters and the advertisers. Here is what I have gathered and you can also see what TechCrunch has mention.

Podcasters can signup to the service for free, add your podcast to the podcast directory, and then simply change your feed to point to your new Fruitcast RSS feed. Fruitcast will then stick a small 10 to 15 second long advertisement message that is simple and unobtrusive to the beginning or end of your podcast (possibly both). When your podcast gets listened to, you will then earn money from an advertiser that has been accepted to place an ad on your podcast. The amount that you will get is determined by the advertisers bidding on your podcast with a starting bid of $0.10 cents. So far, I have seen ranges from $0.10 cents to $0.25 cents per download, which is an excellent range considering that if you have nice amount of listeners, you can generate a steady cashflow. Fruitcast gives the following as an example, “$0.25 per episode × 500 listeners × 10 episodes per month × 12 months in a year = $15,000 annually.” That is an excellent amount and it is even better knowing that you earn it from your podcasts.

Advertisers: Podcasting is growing fast and is full of daily listeners. Imagine knowing that when someone plays a podcast, the first thing they are to hear is a 15 second message about your company. Not only knowing that it is on a podcast, but with Fruitcasts targeted advertising, you will know that your company is being heard by a podcast that relates to your company. You have the ability to actually find a podcast and bid for your ad placement on the price per download. The way it works, and from what I got from James, is that advertisers will be placed in an advertising queue for each podcast. When you create an advertisement, you will be asked for your maximum daily budget for that ad. When you make a bid on a podcast and you are the highest bidder, you will be the first advertisement to run until your maximum daily budget is reached. Once the budget is reached, the next advertiser (the lower bidder) will then get its turn for their ad to run, and so on.

When you signup as a podcaster, your podcast will get added to the Fruitcast podcast directory. You will see the podcast categories listed on the left and on the right you will see the most popular (most download) podcasts. You are able to choose what category your podcast gets placed in when you add your podcast and you will be listed using the title and description (about the size of a small paragraph) that you provided. When your name is clicked, it will then direct the user to your details page.

Your details page is where things start to get interesting. You will see basic information about the podcast and a url to the Podcasts RSS feed, provided by Fruitcast. You will also see a listing of the episodes that the podcaster has published along with information for the size, the date it was published, and how many downloads each episode has received. But even more interestingly is that if you are signed up to Fruitcast and you are an advertiser, it will tell you if you have an advertisement that is approved to play on the podcast. If your advertisements is approved to advertise on the podcast, then you will be able to place a bid on it in the amount of price per download. As mentioned earlier, there can be multiple bidders and the advertiser with the highest bid will get placed on the top of the advertisement queue.

Now that you have a basic understanding of Fruitcast works, signup and start podcasting or advertising! Fruitcast makes it extremely simple. When you login and go to the manage page, it will ask if you want to add a podcast or add an advertisement. Adding your podcast is as simple as filling in a form with the title, category, description, and your RSS feed to the podcast itself. Fruitcast will then use your RSS feed and turn it into its own and provide you with the new RSS feed that you use to earn money. If you have signed up to Fruitcast to advertise, you will fill out a form asking for your ad’s name, audio file, description, and the maximum daily budget. What else is great is that if you do not have an audio file for your podcast, you can contact Fruitcast and they will get you intouch with a voice over artist that will produce a professionally recorded advertisement. Once you submit, you just wait for your ad to get approved and your ready to get bidding.

Fruitcast looks great for both podcasters and advertisers. It makes it extremely easy for anyone to get started and even provides tips on how to start podcasting. It is about time that there is a good service that podcasters can go to for making some cash out of what they love to do.

If you were wondering, the beautiful design for Fruitcast was designed by Joseph Wain of Pen & Think. And don’t forget about they company behind Fruitcast, Forty Media, who has done an excellent job.

View Fruitcast: Making podcasting even sweeter.

Yahoo! has just released an amazing all new Yahoo! Local Maps Beta tonight at around 9pm (TechCrunch’s mention) and all I could say for the last thirty minutes was, “Wow!” Honestly, I haven’t been this impressed in a long time. One thing that shocked me was that Yahoo! actually stepped away from Ajax in this one and used Macromedia Flash instead. The new Yahoo! Maps also has some amazing features such as multi-point directions, live traffic, details, and an amazing new API that allows you to create Yahoo! Maps using Flash and Ajax! Yahoo! has certainly hit a grand-slam on this one.

The interface uses simple and pleasing colors with the main navigational elements on the left and the map on the right. The map looks similar to that of Google Maps, but don’t be fooled because functionality wise, it dominates Google Maps. On the left you are given access to easily search for directions, search for locations, or even select categories of locations on the map, such as gas stations or fast food restaurants. On the right is the map itself. You can click once to slide to a position, click and drag, use the scroll wheel of your mouse, and even directional keys on your keyboard for navigating the map. You will notice that when you move your position, the address in your browser will also change. Yahoo! has done some nice trickery here and actually sets the URL pointing to an anchor with the coordinates and other information in side of the ending string (everything in the URL after the #). Now, because they used anchors, it will update the URL and also allow for it to act as a permanent link. Now, try this: Drag from one point to another. Now press the browser back button. It will scroll back to the previous point with no browser refresh. Yahoo… brilliant. Also, on the right you will see a small box that allows you to easy zoom in and out or to drag a small gray box around that is the focus point on the map. This makes it easy for when viewing a map up close. Now, lets get in a little closer and use their location finding features.

On the left in the “Find on the map” area, you will see a list of categories. Select a category and you will see a list of location types to choose from. When you select on of these, Yahoo! Maps will actually plot each point with nice orange points (note that this will work better when zoomed in on a specific area). So for example, if you were to select the Entertainment category and then Movie Theaters, it will plot all the theaters in the area. Also when selecting the location type, you will now see a list of places to choose from in the place of where you selected the category. Hovering your mouse over one will make the point to open and show the name and making it easier to find the exact position. When you click on a place, it will collapse open with more details and the contact information. You can also click on the point itself and the contact information will show as well.

At this point, we are zoomed in and looking at locations plotted on the map. I live at point A, but how to I get to point B easily (one of the plots on the map)? Very easily. First, you may want to add your start position by going up to the “Get map driving directions” at the top left and filling in the black point A and then pressing enter. This will set your start point on the map. Now, back to the location plots we were looking at before. Simply click and drag the point right to the top left driving area under plot A. You will see that it will actually add the address right it for you. Now, lets make this even more interesting and drag and drop another point onto it. You now have three points in for your directions. Wait! Say that again? Yes, you can now do multi-point directions. Something that Google or Microsoft hasn’t even accomplished yet. So, knowing me, I wanted to play around with this more and by then a minute later I had up to the J marker (10 location points).

You will notice that as you add points, the directions will actually come up. You will see, turn left here, turn right there, etc.. between each point, which just blew my mind. You will also see on the map lines appearing that go from point to point. As you hover over each direction on the left, the lines will highlight and strengthen with darker blue to show what you are looking at. Another thing that I also like about directions on the left was that if you click on one of the instructions (ie: Turn left), it will collapse the box and show you a smaller map of the location right there so you can get a quick visual. You also may want to keep in mind two features for when making directions. “Reverse Directions” and “Roundtrip.” The reverse directions will do exactly as it says, it will take each point and reverse it giving you the opposite of your original directions, which is perfect for going somewhere and then driving back using the same path. Now, they also have the “Roundtrip” feature. Instead of just reversing your directions, why not just add onto them with more directions for the way back home! It will pretty much take the reversed directions and add them onto the last point, making it act as a round trip from point A to B and then back to A again. I am definitely using this for my next trip somewhere.

I had also mentioned that Yahoo! has made an excellent API. They actually made an API that allows you to use Flash OR Ajax for the backend. Which to me is amazing in itself. But from the looks of it, you can create some very feature-rich applications with it. Looking at some of the examples in the Yahoo! Maps Application Gallery, you can see how great it is. In the screenshot above, I have the MashUpcoming.com open. This is a map that shows you locations and events for Upcoming.org. You get to see real-time traffic, use local search, and even view event details all within the map. A few of the others that I found were really nice are the Flickr Maps and the Local Events Browser.

I am very impressed with this release by Yahoo. Just when you though Google Maps was big, Yahoo comes along with their own and in my opinion, feature-wise, dominating. Of course, issues may appear in time that I may have not noticed, but this is Beta! It just released, so just give it some time. If you come across an issue, send them feedback as they requested. We have been seeing some amazing work done with Google’s API and now I cannot wait to see what is going to be created with Yahoo’s. Some have even already made their own, such as this one for Silicon Valley. Amazing work, Yahoo.

View Yahoo! Maps Beta.

I have been patiently waiting for my chance to get a look at the new service, FilmLoop. I received it a little while back and have been using it on and off and now it now appears that FilmLoop has released the beta version on their site, so make sure to grab a copy if you are interested in it (Windows only for now). According to TechCrunch, “FilmLoop is a winner,” and I too agree. Most will relate FilmLoop to Slide, but FilmLoop definitely does have it’s differences that stand out. With FilmLoop, individuals or businesses can broadcast digital content and allow for sharing and searching of their content through FilmLoop’s photo broadcasting network. It is perfect for families, groups, businesses, keeping up with the news, advertising, showing off your photography, etc., and what I love is that you can create collaborative loops. You can create your own film loop, share it, and your friends can add on to it.

The screenshot above is the FilmLoop’s main interface. When it starts up, it will load the bar with all loops that you are subscribed to and that you set to be shown. Now, you may be asking, what exactly is a loop? You can think of a loop as a string of photos that moves across the users screen (scrolls left or right) that can be a private or public loop or a loop you have been invited to. Users can then “communicate” with the loop by subscribing, commenting, and even adding to the loop. The interface for displaying the loops is a small and uncluttered strip using gray, black, and blue colors which actually seems to help keep the focus of the strip the photos. At the bottom of the strip are the options, loop controls, and a slider so you can quickly scan through all your loops. One thing that I would like to see for the interface would be a way to control the speed of the scrolling. At times I feel it is too slow or too fast. You also can skip directly to the next or previous loop by click on the next and previous buttons that look much like an media player. I do feel that when going pressing the next and previous buttons, it skips too fast to the loop and brings on a little confusion. I feel that if they can integrate a smooth sliding inertia type effect to the loop, it would make it a whole better.

Creating your own loop is extremely simple. Open FilmLoop and click on the “create” button located at the bottom left of the strip. You will then be asked to name your loop and when you click, “OK,” it will then skip to your new loop with a graphic saying to click and drag the photos you want in the loop onto the graphic (inside your loop, in other words). You can also click on it to bring up an open dialog. In the screenshot above, you can see that I opened a folder of photos. I can then simply drag one at a time into the loop or even select multiple and drag them all in at once. Once you drag them in you will notice each one appearing one after another. When you put a photo in a loop, it is actually storing the photo onto a secure FilmLoop server, explaining why they do not appear immediately. Once the photos are in you can start setting actions to each photo and even share your loop. Just a note about sharing: If you invite others to use your loop, they can also click and drag photos into your loop and it will update the loop, which is an excellent feature and really livens the social aspect of FilmLoop. Inviting is also very easy. You simply click on the “invite” button at the bottom of FilmLoop, select a loop from the list, fill in some email addresses, add a message, and send. They will receive the invite by email and can then subscribe to your loop and download FilmLoop if they haven’t yet.

Now lets talk about something even more interesting, the loops and loop actions. Each photo in a loop has what FilmLoop calls, actions. You can set an action to show more details of a photo, go to a website, open another loop, bring up a comment area, and more. At default, when you create your own loop, photos will use the Zoom View, which is how you can view details on a photo, view descriptions, comments, and other options. But if you were to subscribe to, lets say, a news loop. The loop will most likely show photos based on the news and on clicking a photo, it would direct you to the news article in relation to the photo.

(View Larger Screenshot)

When you click on a photo that has the action set to, Zoom View, a window will open that looks similar to the above (Larger Screenshot). A Zoom View window will show you the photo at a bigger size, descriptions, tags for the loop, comments, and options for printing, saving, rotating and deleting. If you are the creator of the loop, you will also be able to change descriptions and manage the comments. The comment system is very basic but gets the job done. Comments will be shown on the top right and along with the name of the commenter. You can also click on the fullscreen option that will show the photo in full screen and allow you to browse through the photos in the loop like a slideshow.

I have explained the basics of the FilmLoop interface, what loops are, and how to create your own loops. But you cannot fully experience FilmLoop until you view the broadcast network. To view the network, open FilmLoop and select, “Network,” which is located at the bottom of the strip. It will then open a new window called the “Loop Organizer.” On the left column, you will see a list with selection for the network, your library, now playing, and other folders or playlists if you rather. If you clicked on the network button on the FilmLoop strip, you should see the network selected on the left and on the right a page that is your method of finding loops. On the top of the page are a list of categories that you can select to view, such as public, humor, news, places, sports, etc.. Below this you will see a nicely layed out page with photos about various hot topics and news. When you click on the any of these photos, it will subscribe you to the loop and show all the photos in the FilmLoop strip. If you don’t like it, you can easily ubsubscribe by right clicking and choosing unsubscribe. I want to look for specific loops though and at the time, I was interesting in humor. So, I selected the Humor tab at the top. It then directs you to a page that lists all of the loops in the humor category. Selecting a loop will subscribe you to it and load it into the strip. If there are a large amount of loops, it will split them up into pages, which you can select at the bottom of the page. I feel that this method of showing all the loops is rather hard to search through and even though they are placed in the specific categories. They need to incorporate some type of search bar at the top that you can search through all loops. They also allow you to add tags to your loops that you create, but I do not see any way of searching by tags anywhere. I would really like to see a page for a tag cloud. Other than that, the only other issue I saw was that the cartoon, Dilbert, was nowhere to be found and I could not even make a search for it.

Now that you know how to subscribe to loops, lets take a look at unsubscribing, organizing, and hiding loops. Simply open up the network window again and as stated above, you can select to see your library on the left. Click on, “My Library” will show everything you have created, been invited to, or subscribed to. Each loop that is listed will show if the loop is playing, what the loop is called, who the creator is, and the last time it has been updated. If you do not want to show a loop on FilmLoop but still wish to subscribe to it, click on the loop and then select, “Stop Playing,” at the bottom of the window. You will now see that the loop will not be shown anymore in the strip, but still visible your library. You can also right click on a loop to easily invite people, unsubcribe from it, or set it to play again. The “Now Playing” folder will show all loops that you have allowed to be shown on your loop. If you decide to hide one, it will not show that loop in this folder. You can also see loop that you have created or loops that you have subscribed to two by selecting their folders. If you do not like to view all of the loops this way, you can create your own folders and click and drag loops inside of them. The only thing that I have been doing really is just subscribing and unsubscribing.

Another thing that I want to mention is that you can link to your loops from your website. If you go the “What Is FilmLoop?” section from the FilmLoop website, you will see on the left three scrolling loops. You can actually make those for your own loops as well and insert them on your site, which I find is really great. Perfect if you own a photography website. To do this, go to your loop in FilmLoop and right click it. Then select, “Web/Blog Link.” You will then see a button that says, “Copy HTML.” Click on that and then just paste the code in your site. That’s all to it!

Overall, FilmLoop is great. It is feature packed, you can subscribe to your favorite loops, create your own, and even collaboratively work on a loop. I haven’t run into any bugs yet and the performance is surprisingly well with a memory usage much less then many other applications I have running. I hope for the best of luck for FilmLoop and feel that it will be very successful. FilmLoop has already raised $5.6 million in from two Silicon Valley Venture Capital firms: GlobeSpan Capital Partners and Garage Technology Ventures and it seems that the company has some high expectations. Hope they meet them. Great work, FilmLoop.

View FilmLoop - Are you in the loop?

Microsoft has announced its new release of Windows Live today, thanks to Mike for the news. So I took a look at some of their ideas, specifically Live.com Beta and Windows Live Favorites Beta. I would like to go over Live.com right now with you and maybe touch up on Windows Live Favorites tomorrow. Live is much like the excellent service, Netvibes, which allows you to create your own personalized page with content that you want. There are a few features that Live has that Netvibes does not though, such as inline searching, email integration, and gadgets. Lets take a look.

If you have seen Microsoft’s Start.com project, then you will notice that Live is very similar in looks and basic functionality. This is because the team working on Live are the ones who are also working on Start.com. But they have made some new features that makes Live worth a look. Live gives you a simple to use interface using Ajax technology with drag and drop style blocks. You can drag each block into different columns and above or below other blocks. Something new that I liked was that you can say how many columns you want on your page. At default, it is set to two, but I like to have three and was happy to be able to set that. At the top of the page is a search bar and below that are your blocks along with the sidebar and options. The sidebar provides you with preset feeds you can subscribe to, preset gadgets, and a selection called, “My Web,” which are items that you have created for the page. You can create blocks for feeds, weather, horoscopes, search results, and even better, the new gadget functionality (I will touch up on this below). I also want to note that Live only works in Internet Explorer at the time and they are working on Firefox compatibility.

The search functionality of Live has some nice features. When you make a search, it will come up with results from the web. But you can also select to search from news or feeds. It will not search the actual feed content itself though, just the name and description of feeds. Another feature that I liked was that when you make a search, on the top right of the results you will see a link that says, “add to my page.” When you click this, it will turn it into a block that will show the top results for that search term. If you want search results in a block on your page though, I recommend using the Multi-search Microsoft Gadget, which brings me to my next topic, gadgets.

Gadgets are small third-party applications that you can easily add to your page using the “Add Content” option located in the sidebar. I find these gadgets very interesting because anyone can develop their own using JavaScript/DHTML. There are some interesting gadgets already and I imagine there will be a lot more soon. To install a gadget, go to the Microsft Gadgets website and find a gadget of interest. When you are on that gadgets page, select the link, “Add this Gadget to Live.com.” It will then go to Live.com and provide you with a URL and some instructions telling you to go to “Add Content” and inserting the Gadget URL in the advanced area. You gadget should now appear in the left sidebar. When it does, click on it and you will see a message, like in the above screenshot, asking you to install the gadget. Once installed, you can then drag the gadget from the sidebar onto your page.

Personally, I feel the gadgets are the highlight of Live.com, and it looks like TechCrunch agrees. I have actually tried all the available gadgets at the time (eight so far) and they work rather well. Some acted buggy at times and some I just haven’t a use for. I really liked the gadget for Flickr and the Todo list, which you can see in the above screenshot. The Todo list is very basic and could use some design adjustments, but gets the job done. The Flickr gadget allows you to enter a tag and then it will create a slideshow of photos under that tag and change every five seconds or so. You can also find gadgets for Multi-searching, Microsoft Virtual Earth, and the fun Trackword that is a different scrambled word everyday. These all can be found at the Gadget Gallery.

Overall, I didn’t find Live.com all that great and think I am going to stick with Netvibes as my personal page for now. I know Live is still in early beta though and will give a some time. I found it a little buggy at times, some of the gadgets had troubles every now and then, and I just personally like the look and feel of Netvibes more. I also don’t really understand what the point of the “Hide” feature is. They say it is to make the page cleaner, but really, I just find it as a pointless addition. You can hide all of the blocks and the sidebar and still have the search bar visible. This is cool, but the thing that I didn’t like about it was that when you made a search, nothing happens or appears because it is all hidden. If I make a search, I want to see the results. I don’t want to fill in a term, click search, then click on the show link so I can see them. Other than that, no big issues. They are working on Firefox compatibility too, which is great to hear.

View Windows Live.

BubbleShare is a new photo-sharing service that allows you to very easily create photo albums with no registration and then share them with anyone in a matter of minutes. The intent of the project is to help you share your stories by creating your photo albums and sharing them. In BubbleShare’s initial launch post, they mention how it is not meant to be a simple web-based slideshow, but rather a work of art. I feel they did an excellent job and have made it extremely simple to use. I have made a few albums, tested around, and gathered my notes. Now, lets take a look at BubbleShare.

BubbleShare had mentioned that they wanted to make it as simple as possible for you to share your photos. Well, they certainly have. The first page you are presented with actually is the upload page where you select your photos and add them to the list for it to use for your album. You will see a button, “Add Photo.” When you click on this it will bring up your computers Open file window so you can select a photo. As you can see in the screenshot, in Windows, I have selected to view thumnail view so I can view the photos and then add them. When you select a photo it will add it to the list and the “Create Album” button will then allow you to select it. Make sure you have added all the photos you want before you click on the button. Once you do it will load them up and process your album. Also note that if you wanted to selected multiple photos at once, you can try to use the Enhanced Uploader that they provide a link for below the buttons.

When you click on the “Create Album” button, it will bring you to a page that looks like the above. You will see a progress bar starting at 0% and will actually upload and process each photo you have selected as you fill out the form below. Once it reaches 100%, submit the form and you will then be directed to the Slideshow Editor. This is really neat because the progress indicator actually is real-time and does not require the page to reload because I am assuming the use of Ajax. You will also receive two emails (I would prefer only one though). One that gives you the link to a page that you can manage your album and another email for the address you can share with your friends so they can view it. Now lets look at the Slideshow Editor.

The Slideshow Editor allows you to change the order or the slideshow, remove photos, change the name and descriptions, add/remove comments, and the part that got me excited was audio caption recording, which I will mention below. In the screenshot above, you see a row of thumbnails. You can take these thumnails and drag them left or right to organize the album the way you want it. You can also click on the little x’s to delete them. To manage a photo, just click on the thumnail and you will then be able to change the caption, add comments, and what I find really cool, the Audio Caption feature. But there is one thing that is missing . You cannot add photos once the album has been created. This means that when you create it for the first time, make sure you have all the photos. I’d hope that BubbleShare is working on this because it would definitely be good to have. Other than that, everything worked great.

Above, I mentioned that there is a feature in the Slideshow Editor called, “Audio Caption.” What you do is select the photo that you want to add a caption for and then click on the button on the left menu that says, “Audio Caption.” It will then bring up a box that will tell you that you can record your voice for up to 30 seconds starting once you click “record.” If you clicked on the record button for the first time, Macromedia Flash may come up with a setting box asking if you want to allow for recording. Select yes and then the recording will begin! You can describe your photo, talk about your story, or whatever it may be. When you are done, click on the “Stop” button. You can then select to record again, play what you have already made, save it for the photo, or cancel it if you decide not to use an audio caption. If you decided to save the recording, it will add a play button next to a speaker icon on the bottom right of the photo. Works great and is definitely a great feature.

Now the only thing left to do is to share your album! Here is one I made for when I was testing it out (and yes, they are my own photos). When you are the creator of the album, BubbleShare will remember that it is you and will not ask for your name or email when commenting, but if you aren’t the creator, you will see a comment text area. When you click on “Comment,” it will then slide down and give you two more fields for your name and email. The album uses Ajax and also allows you to play the slideshow instead of doing next and previous. You can also subscribe to comment feeds or subscribe to receive an email for comments from a photo you have commented on. You may also be wondering how you can get a permanent link to a photo. Simply go to the thumbnail view and copy the location of a thumbnail. I do feel that they should provide this link on the photos page itself though to make it easier to grab it.

Mac OS X users! You can even download a plugin for iPhoto that will allow you to actually create an album by using your existing photos in iPhoto! I would imagine that this would make it a whole lot simpler for you if you already use iPhoto.

If you want to keep up on news and updates with BubbleShare, you can read the BubbleShare Weblog.

View Bubble Share Photo-sharing.

Update: The BubbleShare Weblog seems to be down right now. I will keep the links active in the meantime incase it gets back up again.