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Source:Mashable!

Picking and choosing your way to a furnished home is rarely a perfect science. Appliances you think would go well with your kitchen blueprint,   for example, may not fit so well with things once you take delivery. The planning process is inevitably followed by tweaking, compromise, and reserved acceptance that things will not go as originally desired. But with the advent of Web-based services, you can perhaps find a more complete view of what’s to come. MyDesignIn, a new 2D and 3D design and shopping service introduced at DEMOfall 08 this week, is one such aid.

First, it’s necessary to emphasize the beta label on this one. While most of the functions  operate as advertised, there are a few fibers frayed at the ends that make the user experience less than exemplary. For one, the occasional emergence of a progress window within the MyDesignIn editor space sometimes lingers unnecessarily. Suffice it to say that it can be distracting. What’s more, the ability to drag-and-drop products onto the overhead layout of a space is very convenient, yet there are bugs in evidence. When designing a virtual kitchen, components would occasionally fail to display properly in 3D.

Yes, there’s no question that MyDesignIn requires some getting accustomed to. You might dabble in room making for the good part of an hour before you’ve made much progress in fitting items as you wish. And unless you happen to be very spartan in your ways and are quick to please, the restriction put in place to add items from the right-hand menu only when in 2D view simply brings tedium to the mix. Still, the service, given the audience it seeks to attract, has its benefits. It presents a fairly broad supply of products to the user, and if what MyDesignIn provides isn’t quite enough, you can use the available bookmark utilities to grab images from elsewhere around the Web to include in a portfolio of ideas. Admittedly, things grow a little disjointed in that respect, as MyDesignIn is naturally not intelligent enough to take odd photographs and assemble interactive graphics. But from a planner’s perspective, the service’s various features could prove handy all the same.

In short, some aspects of MyDesignIn are intuitive. Others are not. There are quite a few pros and cons to weigh, but this beta release is overall an interesting one, and could ultimately be useful enough that it warrants a try. If you’re remodeling or making anew, and you want to experiment with brand names without having to spend a penny, this is something to register for. If you want to share your designs with others, you can do so. It’s really all a matter what the user will get out of his/her account. Time is the only investment here.

—Related Articles at Mashable - All That’s New on the Web:MyDesignIn Launches Social Home DesignFloorPlanner is Cyworld Without the Avatars30elm Launches Practical Home Design CommunitySceneCaster’s 3D Virtual CommunityBest4c Offers Basic Chart Creation & Whiteboard ToolsDesignerPages Offers Social Network for Architects & Suppliers

Source:Mashable!

Remember Bebo’s open media platform initiative? In short, it means that Bebo users can include premium music and video content in their profiles. At launch, Bebo had a long list of media partners, including BBC, Yahoo, Last.fm, MTV Networks, and ESPN.

Now, the partnership with ESPN is actually visible to users, who can access ESPN’s short videos, including highlights from sport events and short clips from ESPN original programming, through Bebo’s open media platform. The simplest way to find it is to go to this address: www.bebo.com/ESPNVideoSC; unfortunately it all works only if you’re located in the US.

Specifically, this content includes “SportsCenter Right Now, a twice-daily capsule of top sports stories, highlights and breaking news; clips from ESPN programs such as Mike and Mike in the Morning, Pardon the Interruption and Around the Horn; and breaking news and game clips from major professional and college teams and sporting events.”

It’s all nice and dandy, but I always have the feeling that users are being given scraps instead of the real thing: full shows, entire sporting events. This deal certainly won’t hurt Bebo’s Open Media Platform, but from the user’s perspective, it’s really not all that big of a deal.

—Related Articles at Mashable - All That’s New on the Web:ScoreCenter. Worldwide Sports Scores All the Time.Bebo Open Media: Bebo Makes Its Platform MoveBebo Hires a Bank. Looking to Sell?Bebo Open Platform: 4 Million App Installs in One WeekESPN Online, Free for College and MilitaryBebo Opens Developer Platform with Support for Facebook ApplicationsBebo Adds RSS

This entry was posted on Tuesday, September 9th, 2008 at 11:31 am and is filed under video, social networking, web 2.0, web, bebo, sports, espn. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.