Secondly, YouTube has discretely implemented a new feature which allows you to record videos directly to their site via your webcam. No software is needed, other than a web browser.

Check out the full article on Ars Technica.

Then there’s Netscape.com. You might notice some similarities between this site and Digg’s. That’s because Netscape is a complete clone of Digg, through and through. That’s fine, shitty, but fine. I’ve seen this done plenty of times before. What I’m confused about, however, is what Netscape’s head honcho, Jason Calacanis, is proposing to do next. He is offering to pay the top posters of Newsvine, Digg, Reddit, and Flickr if they post a minimum of 150 stories per month to Netscape. They would receive $12,000 a year and be dubbed Netscape Navigators. Clever, huh? But that’s not what I’m confused about either. Business is business after all.

What baffles me is this; if you are going to hire professional posters (pseudo-editors if you will) to add content to your site, then why clone Digg at all? The whole point of Digg and the web 2.0 movement is to rely almost soley on user interaction and participation. A read/write web instead of the static web of old. Why not clone Wired, or Slashdot, or CNN.com for that matter? Or better yet, come up with something original.

Leo Laporte of TWiT.tv threw in his two cents, saying that Jason has once again “whipped up a nice publicity stunt”, and a distasteful one at that. He further states that the success of Digg, and the other above mentioned sites, isn’t limited to any one set of users, but rather by user participation as a whole. I tend to agree.

Here’s where the gloves come off. Kevin Rose, co-founder of Digg.com, said the Netscape situation was Bullshit on Friday in his weekly podcast. Jason retorted by saying, “This is a serious discussion and I’m saddened that Kevin has reduced it to personal attacks.” Of course Kevin retaliated with this post on his blog, ending it with:

“ps – have a beer and relax, it’s just diggnation ”

I had to chuckle. This is geek gossip at its best folks!

In a related story, Netscape got hacked today. Visitors to the site were greeted with a pop-up message saying”Hi to all you diggers out there“.
You can’t make this stuff up.