Comedy Central’s signature fake news programs, “The Daily Show” and “The Colbert Report,” are focused firmly on the final stretch of the race for the White House. A glance at Indecision2008, the network’s website devoted to the year in campaign coverage, will reveal as much.

For those who feel that on-demand video clips aren’t satisfying enough to have on Election Day, however, the network has tapped the Web-based IM engine Meebo to power chat rooms on Indecision2008 to enable live discussion among its users.

In addition to the standard set of Meebo rooms provided for visitors, Comedy Central will host a live blogging session featuring Patton Oswalt, a regular of the American standup comedy circuit, and it will also present interviews with correspondents of “The Daily Show.”

Naturally there will be an attempt by various broadcast and cable-based networks on November 4th to seek out the most viewer engagement possible for the final hours of the election. And with Comedy Central’s fairly recent enhancement of its websites to cater to increased demand for video content, it seems to be a sensible course of action to introduce live communications to the Indecision2008 channel.

As Meebo and Comedy Central explain, their partnership for Election Day is intended “to increase user engagement and time spent online.” So long as enough awareness is made about the new features (the network will market the availability of chat rooms through on-air promos on November 4), real-time chat could well be the next best thing to a 24-hour style news video broadcast.

—Related Articles at Mashable | All That’s New on the Web:Comedy Central Launches InDecision2008, a Political Spoof of the ElectionsCyworld Launches Live ChatMozilla Adds Live Chat Support: Eroding Microsoft’s Stronghold?iVillage Does More Social Stuff - Adds Live ChatWindows Live Messenger Arrives on XBoxDailyComedy Partners with PaltalkWindows Live Messenger Partners with GoPets to Launch Virtual Dog Park

If you think there is too much noise about the U.S. election now, wait until next week. On Election Day, not only will every media outlet be covering the vote, but so will voters themselves who will have ample opportunity to Tweet, Digg, video, and IM the vote.

Most of these “reports” will probably consist of people telling the world that “I’m voting!” or who they just cast their vote for. Who you vote for used to be a private affair, but no more. It is almost as if your vote does not count, unless you IM or Tweet it. (But don’t worry, it does).

On the bright side, when every voter is also a potential election observer, any shenanigans can and will be instantly broadcast over the Web and quickly picked up by the mainstream media. At least there will be a clear record that can serve as a starting point for later investigation if need be. No doubt, there will be false Tweets as well.

Flixster will be deploying Meebo Community IM later this evening. The product, which has been in the works since early this year, allows Flixster users to chat with one another using Meebo from inside of the Flixster interface, with a service that looks remarkably similar to Facebook Chat.

Users get a buddy list showing which of their Flixster friends are currently signed on, their statuses, and notifications of their recent activities, such as rating movies. The instant messaging conversations take place within a taskbar that will reside at the bottom of the Flixster UI – just like on Facebook. Here’s a demo of how it works:

While the Flixster experience is completely private labeled, conversations can be popped out and carried over into the Meebo UI. Likewise, your Flixster friends will be part of the buddy list you see when logged in on Meebo.com.

Flixster is the first site to launch Community IM, but Meebo recently announced several other major partners, including MyYearbook, Tagged, and Piczo. On Meebo’s Vimeo page, there is also a demo for a Flickr integration, though it’s not clear if and when this will launch.

—Related Articles at Mashable | All That’s New on the Web:Meebo Adds More Big Partners Ahead of Instant Messaging Platform LaunchMeebo Rooms Launches API and an Ad Network to Monetize ItMeebo Firefox Extension Now LiveCreate Custom Designed Meebo RoomsMeebo Plugin Now Available for FacebookFlixster Calls Down $5M of its Series BMeebo’s Breakthrough: File Transfer Between IM Networks

Later this year, Meebo will launch Community IM, a product that enables websites to add their own instant messaging and chat service. Back in July, the company announced an impressive list of initial launch partners including Flixster, MyYearbook, and Piczo. Tonight, they are adding a few more partners to that mix, and with it, claiming that in total they will reach “7.6 percent of global Internet users” with the new platform – about 72.9 unique users globally each month according to comScore.

The interesting aspect of Community IM is that for sites that integrate it, users will be able to converse both on the host site and on Meebo.com, the company’s main web-based chat service that also allows users to simultaneously access accounts on AIM, Yahoo, and MSN. Additionally, partners - which now also include Nickelodeon, PerfSport, and Tagged - get a share of the revenue generated through advertising within the IM and chatrooms that Meebo provides.

Meebo is certainly not alone in the private label IM space. Userplane offers a popular and easy to install IM product for publishers, and has partners like KickApps that distribute it to hundreds of niche social networks around the Web. However, what’s unique about Meebo’s offering is that they also offer a popular destination site, in turn enabling users to maintain one identity that they can carry with them to popular sites like Flixster and also access via Meebo.com.

This actually solves a fairly big problem in the IM space. The two biggest examples of IM integrated in social networks – Facebook and MySpace – live largely on islands where you need to be logged into the social network or download a client that supports them to use it. With Meebo, you can now combine the instant messaging experience from more than a dozen different social sites into one, all without download anything. It’s a pretty good deal for users, and one that big partners seem to be embracing as well.

—Related Articles at Mashable | All That’s New on the Web:Meebo’s Breakthrough: File Transfer Between IM NetworksMeebo Firefox Extension Now LiveMeebo’s Chinese Clone Causing Too Much TroubleBebo and AIM Partner to Offer Instant Messaging on ProfilesMeebo Signs Yahoo Messenger’s Chris Szeto as New Product ExecMeebo Named Fastest Growing IM ClientAWESOME: Meebo on the iPhone

I had a phone call late last week with a semantic startup called Siri that was spun out of SRI International (the birthplace of the computer mouse and the LCD screen, among many other important technologies). Most startups are willing to talk about their products “off the record” but this one wouldn’t divulge much beyond the fact that they’ve raised $8.5 million in Series A funding from Menlo Ventures and Morganthaler.

What we do know is that the company was incorporated in December 2007 with the goal of commercializing aspects of the CALO cognitive learning system, which receives heavy funding ($200 million plus) from the PAL arm of Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, a supporter of research in a broad range of technologies that could potentially benefit the Department of Defense. Source:TechCrunch

A couple days ago, we posted some leaked screenshots of Brightcove 3, the completely gutted and rebuilt Web video platform from Brightcove that is launching on Tuesday. I was able to catch up with Brightcove CEO Jeremy Allaire, who gave me an update on the company and took me through all the changes in the service.

Brightcove is a Web video publishing platform that has raised $91 million and boasts hundreds of major media brands as its customers, including Dow Jones, Showtime, Time magazine, and the New York Times. TV networks, magazines, newspapers, and music companies all use Brightcove to distribute and manage video on their sites and across the Web. Increasingly, so do big corporations like Sun Microsystems, universities like NYU, and political organizations like the Obama campaign.

Allaire says that, collectively, his customers are distributing Web video at the rate of “several hundred million streams per month,” which would make Brightcove one of the top ten video networks. It would still be well below No. 1 YouTube, which is streaming five billion videos a month, but perhaps within spitting distance of No. 2 Fox Interactive/MySpace (446 million streams) or No. 3 Microsoft (286 million streams). Source:TechCrunch

Meebo has disclosed that 11 more sites have committed themselves to integrating Community IM, its forthcoming out-of-the-box service that adds Facebook Chat-like instant messaging capabilities to the bottom of any website.

The newest enlistements include Bleacher Report, Dhingana, Fanpop, GlobalGrind, IBeatYou, OrangeShark, PerfSpot, UGAME.net, Yaari, Zinch, and Zorpia. These join a set of previously announced partners that includes DanceJam, Flixster, myYearbook, Nickelodeon/MTVN Kids and Family Group’s AddictingGames, Piczo, SparkArt, Sugar Publishing and Tagged. That’s a grand total of 19 companies that believe instant messaging within the browser will make their sites stickier.

In his first blog post, he explains the blog name: “Welcome to my personal blog. While Google is a play on googol, too is a play on the much smaller number - two. It also means “in addition”, as this blog reflects my life outside of work.”

In the second blog post, he gets a little more serious. He talks about how DNA startup 23andMe (cofounded by his wife Anne Wojcicki) has shown he has certain gene mutation that is tied to Parkinson’s Disease - G2019S. While the mutation is rare in people with Parksinson’s, in some ethnic groups it accounts for a substantial proportion of familial Parkinson’s. In other words, if you have it, there’s a good chance you’ll get Parkinson’s.

He says based on current available data he’s 20%-80% likely to get the disease. And he can now do something about it:Source:TechCrunch
Next week is our MeetUp in Austin, Texas, but before we party we are going to tackle the issue of how to use the Web to build grassroots support for a business, a cause, or a political candidate. Everyone loves to give lip service to grassroots campaigns, but do they really scale? When do they work and when is it best to use traditional mass marketing and outreach? To help answer these questions, we’ve put together with Austin Ventures a Roundtable: “The Web Starts At The Grassroots”. We are releasing the final 100 tickets here. They cost $50 each, proceeds will go to the Lance Armstrong Foundation, and each ticket will get you into the Austin MeetUp afterward (which is otherwise sold out).

Some new panelists joining me will be:

• Shawn Colo, cofounder of Demand Media
• Owen Van Natta, former chief revenue officer, Facebook
• Greg Lee, CFO Lance Armstrong Foundation (Livestrong)
• Mike Butler, CMO HomeAway (formerly CMO of T-Mobile USA)
• Morgan Warstler, CTO & Co-Founder, SaysMe TV Inc.
• Clay Nichols, Chief Creative Officer, DadLabs Inc
• Bryan Menell, Austin StartupBlog
• Naveed Lalani, co-founder Piryx
• Chris Pacitti, General Partner, Austin VenturesSource:TechCrunch

Instant messaging service Meebo has given us a demo of its upcoming “Community IM” platform, which allows websites to seamlessly integrate a browser-based chat window very similar to Facebook Chat.

Meebo announced the upcoming community chat feature last July, with initial partners including DanceJam, myYearbook, AddictingGames, Sugar Publishing and Tagged. Flixster will be the first partner to launch the service, with an expected release in mid-October, with more services launching in the coming months.

The video below shows Meebo’s Community IM integrated into Flickr, which isn’t actually one of Meebo’s current partners (though an alliance may form in the future). The project was constructed as a proof-of-concept during last week’s Yahoo Hack Day, and was awarded second place in the event’s Flickr competition.

LiveWorld is a publicly traded company that’s been around since 1996 and is best known for its white labeled social networks. These are online communities that LiveWorld helps clients build up around their existing brands, and they often take a good deal more time and effort to set up than communities created on top of self-service platforms like Ning or KickApps.

However, LiveWorld is making a significant foray into “out-of-the-box” communities with the release of LiveBar, a widget-like site addition that brings community features to any website using only one line of JavaScript.

In a move that could have a major impact on the way you surf the Web, the Mozilla Foundation today announced Snowl, an experimental solution designed to bring messaging and Web surfing together in the browser.

According to the company, Snowl is designed to answer the question of whether or not a browser can “help you follow and participate in online discussions.”  Mozilla believes that browsers are specially designed to address issues most users have in handling messages – weeding out the less important messages and navigating through the messages – and with Snowl, it aims to bring messaging platforms into one central location to let you surf the Web and handle messages at the same time.

Mozilla is still unsure of whether or not people will actually want to use the service and is opening up Snowl for us to figure that out.  But if it does become a desired application, Mozilla expects to offer “support for additional message sources like Facebook, AIM, and Google Talk; create an interface for writing and sending messages to enable true two-way conversations; and develop an API to make it easier for developers to build new experimental interfaces, e.g. an instant message view.”

There’s no way to tell if Snowl will be a success or if most users will even want to use the program.  But at first glance, it looks like a winner.

Let’s face it – it’s utterly annoying to switch back and forth between tasks to answer some messages and address other issues in AIM or Google Talk.  But if messaging was built into the browser, productivity would certainly increase and the overall usefulness of a standard Mozilla browser would skyrocket.

I don’t know about you, but I’m behind Snowl.

You can download Snowl here.

—Related Articles at Mashable! - The Social Networking Blog:Mozilla Messaging Spins Off To Develop Thunderbird 3Mozilla Launching Open Source Email Project for Developer CommunityMozilla Names John Lilly as New CEOMozilla Prism: Bringing Web Apps to the DesktopMozilla Launces Desktop Integration Tool For FirefoxMozilla Financial Report Shows its Increasing Importance to GoogleMozilla Adds Live Chat Support: Eroding Microsoft’s Stronghold?

Source:Mashable!

Rejaw is not YATC (Yet another Twitter Clone). Sure, it has some similarities but it’s really more of a hybrid of twitter, Plurk, and Meebo. It’s a micro-blogging service with a hint of chat. Here’s the quick and dirty rundown of its best features.

The first thing you will notice is the different terminology they use. For example, a public message on Twitter is called a Shout and a private direct message is called a Whisper.

The other difference is the size limit of messages. Rejaw allows messages up to 1,000 characters instead of the 140 characters that Twitter allows.

One of the most refreshing (pun intended) things about this service is that it isn’t as static as twitter because the messages automatically appear on your screen in real-time. This adds a much needed instant messenger feel to the microblogging experience. The most unusual thing about Rejaw is that it has a Mac client called Rejaw Radar for the desktop, but not a windows version yet! That is in the works though.

The un-twitter-like ability to add audio, video and images within a message post via links is very nice. This means no files to upload as on services like Pownce and Utterz. Simply paste the URL in your message and the picture, song or video will be instantly embedded within your post.

In what seems to be a continuation of a never ending growth pattern by Meebo, it was widely reported this morning that they’re now going to be offering branded chat for social networks and online communities. They have a staggering list of volunteer launch partners as well, including DanceJam, Flixster, myYearbook, Nickelodeon/MTVN Kids and Family Group’s AddictingGames, Piczo, SparkArt, Sugar Publishing and Tagged.

Sean and I had a great discussion with two of the three founders of Meebo on today’s Mashable Conversations, and we came away with two main things that really are noteworthy about this implementation, aside from the technology aspects of it.

First of all, the sheer size of the expected network growth is particularly eye-popping.  According to Seth, Meebo, after implementation is finished, will have a global reach of 54.7 million, including an unduplicated reach in the US of 23.3 million. This is accomplished by allowing inter-site communication.  If you signup on Piczo, for instance, you’ll be able to speak with users from Flixter.  This is accomplished by use of the XMPP (Jabber) architecture for the IM service backend.

The other thing particularly noteworthy is that each partner is entering into a revenue sharing agreement, so that advertising supported chat will not only be a tool to significantly increase stickiness, but it will be a profit center as well.

Aside from that, we got a little bit of insight into exactly where the name Meebo comes from - you can too.  The video is embedded below (or you can download the MP4 version here).

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—Related Articles at Mashable! - The Social Networking Blog:Meebo Rooms Launches API and an Ad Network to Monetize ItMeebo Firefox Extension Now LiveCreate Custom Designed Meebo RoomsMeebo Plugin Now Available for FacebookMeebo’s Breakthrough: File Transfer Between IM NetworksMeebo’s Chinese Clone Causing Too Much TroubleMeebo’s Custom Chat Rooms for New Advertising Options