I love hearing about cool new start-ups, and Ucubd might be one of my favourites, at least as much as fun factor goes.
Standing for “you cubed”, Ucubd is (in their own words) “a mashup platform that allows bloggers and other web publishers to combine popular social media content from YouTube, Twitter, Amazon and others and embed these mashups on their sites or link to them on our site.”
So, basically, Ucubd creates a fun info box based on the information you give it.
How It Works
Ucubd is based around embed codes (like those found on YouTube and Hulu), which you would normally use to embed your favourite video on your blog, website or anywhere that accepts HTML code.
The platform then looks at the video and produces relevant content to it. This could be tweets based around a keyword, or products on Amazon using the same formula.
Ucubd then places a box next to the video with that information. So, for example, you get the latest trailer for The Expendables movie, and you’ll have tweets about all the buzz surrounding this cool-looking guy flick.
Or, you get a video about the World Cup winners history, and you see products like books, tee shirts, footballs and more on sale at Amazon.
There are also templates for Hulu and Flickr, and the option to use Flash and Silverlight in your mash-ups (depending on the template used).
Once you create your mash-up, you can then customize the theme to suit your blog or site; get embed codes or links for blogs, websites or forums; and share via your social networks.
Ucubd and the Semantic Web
One of the cool features about Ucubd is its tie-in to the semantic web.
By tying relevant products and platforms together, Ucubd is part of the growing number of technologies that doesn’t just want to rely on simple keyword searches, but how these keywords are being used by communities and socially connected profiles.
So, in essence, you could make a mash-up, and if you’re logged in via the upcoming Facebook Connect option, similar mash-ups by your friends might pop up on your radar.
You could then feasibly find partners to work with on a collaborated project; or find like-minded people that you could exchange ideas with; or simply find new mash-ups and use them to expand your own.
The technology isn’t perfect. When I tried to make some mash-ups, Ucubd simply used the first word of the YouTube video I selected, and as you can imagine, the results were pretty funky! But, you can define what keywords are used, so this isn’t too much of an issue.
Additionally, the website embed code seems to open up your mash-up on the Ucubd website – it’d be much better to keep on your own site, for obvious reasons (the HTML-only code is ideal for blog sidebars).
The templates are also a little limited at the minute, being restricted to tweets and Amazon products that tie-in with your embed code.
However, these are minor quibbles on a new platform. The idea behind it is fun and solid, and as much as you could make countless fun mash-ups, there could also be a great business use for something like Ucubd (think presentations or after-show events).
Here’s a mash-up of my TEDx talk. What do you think – something that bloggers could find useful?