Chances are that you are getting at least a few emails and IMs with links to YouTube videos every day. While watching these alone can be fun, Synchtube turns this into a far more social experience. Synchtube allows you to share and discuss a video in real time with up to four of your friends. The first person to enter the room controls the playback and also has the ability to change videos. Sponsor Features To get started, just head over to Synchtube.com and copy and paste a link to a YouTube video into the box in the lower right corner. Then send out the link to the room to your friends and start the video once they have arrived. In our tests, the service worked just as advertised. The chat room itself is basic, but it fulfills its purpose without getting in the way. The video sync sometimes lagged behind a bit by up to 4 seconds. This is definitely within an acceptable range, however. Just like these commenters on Reddit , we would love to see a few additional features in the app, including the ability to create playlists, search for videos within the app or give control over the room to another user. The developers have promised to continue to work on this app and plan to add more advanced features in the near future. Verdict For now, if you are looking for an easy way to watch YouTube videos with your friends without having to install a desktop app like DeskTube , Synchtube is one of the easiest apps to use. The app has some limitations, but for the vast majority of users, the current version should work just fine and most of the current issues will surely be fixed in the near future. Discuss

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Synchtube: Watch Synchronized YouTube Videos With Your Friends

Opera just released the first pre-alpha version of Opera 10.5. While most users generally only think about Firefox, Internet Explorer and Chrome as the major players in the current browser wars, there can be no doubt that Opera is working hard to push browser development forward as well. This latest alpha version shows that Opera has worked hard to speed up the browser. Carakan , the new JavaScript engine in Opera 10.5, is up to 7 times faster than Opera's current engine. The new version of Opera also adds a number of new features like an enhanced private browsing mode and a new graphics engine that can be hardware accelerated. Sponsor The new alpha is currently only available for Windows and OSX users - a Linux version will follow soon. Download links can be found at the bottom of this page . New Features New Features: private browsing better integration with native systems notification messages are now non-modal improvements to the search box and the address box new and improved highlighting new inline page search and password manager Besides the focus on speed - an area where Opera used to lead before WebKit based browsers like Safari and Chrome became popular - the company also included a number of other enhancement in this early version of 10.5. Windows 7 and Vista users, for example, will notice that the browser is now closely integrated with the desktop environment and makes use of features like Aero Glass in Vista and Aero Peek and Jump Lists in Windows 7. On the Mac, Opera can now make use of multi-touch gestures like the 3-finger swipe and Growl notifications. Other new features include a new "private tab" and "private window" mode that actually works far better than similar features in other browsers. You just have to right click on the tab bar and select "private tab" to start the private browsing mode in this new tab, for example. Opera also updated the look and feel for the browser's inline page search and password manager. It's All About Speed The focus here for Opera, however, is clearly not so much on bringing new features to the browser (the current Alpha doesn't even support O pera Unite , for example), but on testing the new JavaScript engine. When we spoke to Opera's CEO Jon von Tetzchner about the state of the browser during LeWeb earlier this month, he stressed that the company was very focused on improving the speed of the browser. He did stress, however, that the JavaScript engine was only a small part of this effort and that the company was also looking at other bottlenecks that are slowing the browser down. The fact that that new image rendering engine is already pre-wired for hardware acceleration is a good example for this (though the feature isn't turned on yet). We will bring you more of our interview with von Tetzchner after the holidays. In our own tests, Opera performed remarkably well and this new version clearly shows that it would be unwise to underestimate Opera in the browser wars. We should note, however, that this is still a very early alpha version and that the browser is likely to crash occasionally. Discuss

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Opera Feels The Need for Speed: Releases First Pre-Alpha of Opera 10.5

At Microsoft's Professional Developer Conference , Seesmic's founder and CEO Loic Le Meur just announced that the company will release a native Windows version of its popular Twitter client later today. Seesmic developed this client on top of .NET . As Le Meur told us yesterday, the new client will be faster and use significantly less memory than the current AIR client. In addition, Seesmic will now also feature a Firefox-like plugin infrastructure that will allow developers to extend the application through a new, built-in API. Sponsor As usual, Seesmic will first make this new Seesmic for Windows client available to members of its Team Seesmic beta test community. Signing up for Team Seesmic is easy and you will immediately get access to all of Seesmic's public beta products. Le Meur told us that a native Windows client was something that Seesmic's users had been requesting for quite a while. The Seesmic team worked on this new client for the last few months, though the company managed to keep this development under wraps and today's release comes as a surprise. While there are quite a few good native Twitter clients for OSX, the most popular Twitter clients on Windows are currently AIR apps. Features Being a native client, Seesmic can now also make use of some of Windows' built-in features like a system-wide spellchecker or Windows 7's location services . While Twitter hasn't launched it's location API yet, Seesmic will now be able to tab into this data quickly. The new client will also allow users to drag and drop their friends' avatars into user lists. Just like the current beta version of its AIR app, Seesmic for Windows will support Twitter's userlists and while the look and feel is similar to the AIR app, the Windows client also features vertical tabs in the sidebar that allow users to quickly switch between different views (all, accounts, userlists and searches). Plugins for Seesmic For developers, of course, the new plugin infrastructure also means that they can now offer their services directly in a Twitter client. The current version already showcases plugins from TweetMeme and MrTweet. According to Le Meur, this will also allow other Twitter-like services to build their own plugins and build their own columns in Seesmic without having to establish a formal relationship with the company. In a few weeks, Seesmic will launch a plugin gallery to showcase these extensions. What About the AIR App? Seesmic will continue to develop its Adobe AIR client for the time being, though chances are that the company is also looking at developing a native Mac client. Discuss

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Seesmic Goes Native: Launches Windows-Only Twitter Client