Rants N’ Jibes

Announced Friday, Facebook is joining hands in an effort to making it easier for people to share their personal profile online.

This came as a result of growing interest among the users for such portability needs. Internet social networking giant, MySpace has also announced their launch of such a feature. While MySpace allows users to use their profiles in only a few websites, facebook has announced that the facebook profile can be carried to any site that wants to host them.

The actual portability will be possible after several weeks.

Google Inc, the internet search leader has last year created a network that will make it easier to share music, picture, hangouts and the likes. Its Open Social. While MySpace has joined OpenSocial, Facebook has not.

Facebook widget application will get a new boom with the portability kicking in. This is because developers stand to gain more now that the profiles will be used even outside of the site!

You don’t really have to miss an important news or highlight if you subscribe to a podcast on the station web site. Offering a mix of traditional and new media sources.

For example, here are the top sources for online news, ranked by the number of visitors (from Ars Technica):

Yahoo News
MSNBC
CNN
AOL News
New York Times
Gannett
ABC News
Google News
USA Today
CBS News

While most of these sites are offering short video and/or audio clips, some media sites are now offering premium content that they normally reserve for television or radio (together with new advertising). Did anyone see the NCAA Basketball finals on CBS.com? Did you miss seeing who was eliminated from American Idol on Fox? (you can also see their recent performances on their web site)

Most of these sites are using Adobe Flash streaming technology (like YouTube), but others are starting to use HD video plugins such as those created by American Fork, Utah company, Move Networks, including ABC, Discovery, FOX, ESPN, and Oprah.com.

BYU Television, also using Move Networks’ HD video plugin, is one of the first stations that has around the clock broadcasting content on their site.

In comparison, the lds.org site will host transcripts, video, and audio downloads of LDS General Conference once they become available, but BYU.tv promises to include live HD video of for all morning and afternoon sessions. LDS Church members in Utah may not appreciate how rare it is to be able to watch Conference in your own home around the world as it is being broadcast.