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Hands-on reviews and news about online software and new Web communities, from Webware.com.

Jupiterimages offers single image purchases on Photos.comOctober 30 2008

Jupiterimages announced today that it will now allow users to buy individual images from its vast library of stock photos on Photos.com instead of forcing them to pay monthly subscription fees for access to the images. The move could be a part of the new strategy being set in place by Getty, which recently acquired the company for $96 million.

All the photos currently available on the site can be purchased as single images and according to the company, they will be offered in any desired resolution. Prices will start at $5 for multimedia resolution images with file sizes of about 1MB to 2MB and top out at $70 for high-resolution images with file sizes of about 50MB.

"The introduction of single image sales at all resolutions represents a tremendous revenue opportunity for contributors by delivering their images to a large base of established customers," said Alan M. Meckler, Chairman and CEO of Jupitermedia Corporation, the parent company of Jupiterimages. "Creative professionals and image buyers can now choose from the leading subscription options or buy just the few images they need at an affordable price without having to first purchase credits."

The introduction of single image purchasing is a major step forward for

Oosah launches widget production for social networksOctober 30 2008

Oosah, a company that offers Web 2.0 hosting solutions, announced Thursday that it has launched a new widget design tool that will allow any user to easily create customizable and embeddable rich-media widgets with images, videos, and status updates from popular social-networking platforms, Twitter, YouTube, Craigslist, MySpace, and Flickr.

"Consumers are increasingly using the Internet as their platform of choice for viewing and sharing media with their families, friends, business associates, and customers," said Dan Khasis, Oosah co-founder and chief technical officer. "We felt that what was needed now was a way to make it simpler for users to collect and share content from popular Web sites. Our new Oosahs capability addresses this need."

Regardless of whether users sign up for an Oosah account, they can create and share their content from their favorite sites through a single widget. According to the company, that widget can be embedded in any site and can even be linked to or shared through a unique link or by e-mailing it to others.

To create the widget, users need to follow three steps. First, they need to sel

Third Chrome beta due in days, Google saysOctober 30 2008

Google will soon begin distributing a third beta version of its Chrome Web browser, a release that takes on bugs, performance, and security weaknesses.

"You will automatically get updated in the next few days," Chrome program manager Mark Larson said in a mailing list post Wednesday night announcing the new version. People can check if a new version is available by clicking the wrench menu and selecting "About Google Chrome."

On the security front, Google Chrome version 0.3.154.9 stomps a security problem in which a site--if it convinces a user to open a pop-up window--could show a different Web address than the one that actually supplied the information.

"This flaw could be used to mislead people about the origin of a Web site in order to get them to divulge sensitive information," Larson said.

Found in the new beta: better performance and reliability for plug-ins such as Flash and Silverlight; support for scrolling with a touchpad; and better performance and reliability for people who browse the Web through a proxy intermediary. More details are expected to become available in the Chrome release notes page, though at

Current TV to broadcast Diggs, Twitters on election nightOctober 30 2008

After broadcasting live Twitters during the U.S. presidential debate, Current TV had to go one notch higher for election night.

The cable channel, co-founded by former Vice President Al Gore, has partnered with both Twitter and social news site Digg for the evening of November 4, during which it will feature a "multimedia dashboard" with live messages from Twitter, headlines from Digg, and video from both Current and "video status update" start-up 12seconds.tv. In keeping with the network's young target audience, electronica act Diplo will be performing DJ sets throughout the night, too.

The funny irony is that Digg reportedly once walked away from a $100 million acquisition offer from Current.

"The new pace of democracy is real-time," Twitter co-founder Biz Stone said in a joint release. "Current is helping Twitter amplify the opinions, news, and trends that matter right now. Together, we're influencing

Radus: Subverting the browser paradigmOctober 30 2008

Radus is an ambitious browser-based media viewing service with a boastful pitch: "Radus was created to solve one of the Web's major problems - the lack of a consistent user experience, cited by nearly half of all senior media executive as the main barrier to mass consumer adoption of rich-digital media."

Before I get to the product itself, I have to take issue with that statement, for two reasons. First: "The lack of consistent user experience" is not a problem. Designers don't build Web sites around content in order to make things difficult and different for users. They design sites because the design sells the message of the content as much as the content itself does. I will grant Radus the fact that many sites are hard to use or poorly-designed, but that doesn't, to me, damn the other sites that are distinctive, creative, or beautiful.

Second: "Nearly half of media executives" believe this is a "barrier to mass consumer adoption" of digital media. If they did, they'd have either a) gotten together with other execs to build a standard interface for Web sites, or b) wouldn't be paying designers. See #1. Also, see RSS.

Also regarding that last point: Have you seen YouTube? Or Hulu?

Now, that