In an ironic twist of fate for 2009, Fox's IGN Entertainment, a company known for its game reviews of products like Zombie Apocalypse acquired What They Play . The newest member of Fox Interactive is touted as the "family guide to video games" and offers reviews, warnings and suggested products. Under the umbrella company of What They Like , What They Play uses the "Entertainment Software Rating Board" (ESRB) to warn parents of games containing explicit lyrics, cartoon violence and drug references. Sponsor Editor's note: This story is part of a series we call Redux, where we'll re-publish some of our best posts of 2009. As we look back at the year - and ahead to what next year holds - we think these are the stories that deserve a second glance. It's not just a best-of list, it's also a collection of posts that examine the fundamental issues that continue to shape the Web. We hope you enjoy reading them again and we look forward to bringing you more Web products and trends analysis in 2010. Happy holidays from Team ReadWriteWeb! In an age when gross-out sites like goatse are just a click away, a number of services offer parents the information they need to find quality online entertainment. While past generations were raised on unfiltered television and video games, today's parent take a more active role in the process of media consumption. AOL's PlaySavvy : PlaySavvy is another site that offers parents a chance to check out age-appropriate kids games. Similar to What They Play, this site lists the ESRB ratings next to games and information is categorized by topic and gaming system. Products for console favorites like Xbox 360, PlayStation 3 and Wii are often featured on the site. AOL also offers parents daily articles and a section to view the most popular games. Parents' Choice : Established in 1978, this site is run by the Parents' Choice Foundation - a nonprofit organization that offers awards to the top children's media and toys. Some of the award categories include websites, video games, DVDs, software, television programming and toys. This site definitely skews towards narrative-based educational materials. If your kid has a shorter attention span, you might want to visit PBS Kids instead. Common Sense Media : Common Sense media is a nonprofit organizations dedicated to offering parents reviews and suggestions on appropriate content. The group produces movie, website, TV, game, book and music ratings as well as a number of educational tools for classroom use. The site can be personalized for kids between the ages of 2-17 years old and it's available in English and Spanish. This site tends to weigh the benefits of mainstream media sites. PBS KIDS Island : This site offers parents reading resources, videos and games in English and Spanish. While the majority of the content is best queued up by a parent or teacher, the videos are of particularly high quality and completely commercial free. National Geographic for Kids : This site offers kid-friendly games, videos, stories and activities for nature lovers. The same photography that has made National Geographic a hit with grownups is likely to please kids. Not surprisingly, the video content is equally compelling. Discovery Kids offers a similar experience and is a great site for visual learners. Totlol : Totlol is a parent-moderated version of YouTube. The site offers video options specifically designed for children and even offers "age optimized interfaces" to ensure that kids of different ages get the most appropriate content. In 2008, ReadWriteWeb covered Totlol's beta launch . As of today the site charges a $3 per month subscription fee or $54 until your child grows up. Photo Credit: Swaminathan Discuss

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ReadWriteWeb's List of Kid-Friendly Online Resources

Remember the story of the Russian police officers who went on YouTube and recorded videos condemning rampant corruption throughout the police force? The most prominent among them, Maj. Alexey Dymovsky, has not only been fired from his job - this morning he had fraud charges filed against him for allegedly embezzling $800 while working as a narcotics officer. Dymovsky's public cry for help has been viewed almost 1 million times on YouTube . Mark this down as an example of YouTube proving an effective way for whistle-blowers around the world to get the word out but not necessarily to stay safe in doing so. It's long been hoped that easy online publishing would enable more people to challenge authoritarian governments - but it's not clear yet whether those governments care. Sponsor Of course it's possible that Mr. Dymovsky really did embezzle $800 during his time as a cop and perhaps he should be thankful just for being alive so far after challenging corrupt police. None the less, it's hard not to suspect that these charges were filed as more retribution for the YouTube videos. Being sent to prison after being so visibly critical of Russian police is presumably not something that would be good for Mr. Dymovsky. Two years ago Egyptian police watch-dog blogger Wael Abbas had his videos pulled from YouTube because the company said they violated Terms of Service against showing violence on the site, though they were reposted after international criticism. Will the Russian police officer Mr. Dymovsky receive the same type of international support now that he faces charges, perhaps effectively for speaking to the world? These early cases will likely help determine how useful these new, democratizing social media technologies really are in improving everyday peoples' circumstances around the world. If people in trouble can use social media to speak to the world at large, but the world doesn't care, then perhaps we'll all have to stick to playing Farmville instead of using this Internet thing for more important matters. Discuss

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YouTube Popularity Doesn't Protect Russian Cop Whistle-Blower

Chad Hurley and Loic Le Meur just talked about the past and future of YouTube at LeWeb . According to Hurley, YouTube 's users now upload over 24 hours of content per minute. Hurley refused to talk about YouTube's revenue, though he did mention that revenue at YouTube is up and the cost of operating the site are down. Hurley acknowledged that the mobile site is currently growing faster than the regular website. YouTube also plans to provide more live programming on the site with the help of its partners. Sponsor The ratio between creators and viewers on YouTube is very heavily skewed towards viewers. The number of creators doesn't make up more than just a few percent of all of YouTube's users. Challenges: Better Search and Discoverability According to Hurley, one of the biggest challenges for YouTube is to make videos more discoverable. YouTube needs to develop a better search experience, but the team is also thinking about recommendation technologies and adding more social networking features. Currently YouTube leverages social services like Twitter and Facebook, but isn't much of a social service itself. Hurley hopes that YouTube will be the place where users consumer videos, but isn't necessarily interested in turning YouTube into a full-blown social destination. Moderator Loic Le Meur asked Hurley how YouTube manages to filter content on the site and how the team decides what to take down. Hurley mostly sidestepped this question, though he did mention YouTube's technology for finding copyrighted material. Handful of Users Make more than $1 Million per Year Hurley noted that a handful of users on the site make more than $1 million per year from their videos on YouTube. The company wants to create more opportunities for publishers on the service, though Hurley didn't go into details. YouTube in the Living Room Asked about YouTube on TV and in the living room, Hurley said that his vision is basically a "box, an Internet connection and pizza." He did note, though, that all TV will move towards an on-demand model. Image credit : @scobleizer and thanks to DutchCowGirls for letting us use the visualization of Hurley's argument. Discuss

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Chad Hurley: YouTube Needs to Improve Search - More Live Programming Coming Soon

Dyyno, which allows its users to stream and record live video from any application on their desktops, is launching a major upgrade of its service today. The company's service will now allow users to stream live and recorded video streams in full 1080p HD resolution. Dyyno has also dropped the price for personal accounts - which can stream HD video - to zero. These personal account support up to 100,000 concurrent viewers. Previously, these accounts started at $10 per month. Sponsor For the time being, Dyyno can only stream videos from Windows PCs. The company does offer a browser plugin for watching these videos on the Mac and Windows. The company's CEO Raj Jaswa told us that a Mac client is on the company's roadmap. We took a closer look at the service's features when the company launched in August. While the desktop client has evolved since then, the basic features remain the same. In our tests, the service worked just as advertised and the image quality of the 1080p streams was very high. It takes a decent broadband connection to work well, however - the HD video streams take up about Broadcast at 3Mbps. Dyyno supports up to 30 frames per second and encodes its videos in H.264. The company does not automatically scale the video streams down for users with slower connections, though for on-demand video, content owners can choose different bitrates for their videos. Running Dyyno's desktop client is very easy. After installing the application, you just have to drag the Dyyno logo from the client to any window on your computer and it will automatically start to stream this video on your personal Dyyno page. In addition to live streaming, users can also create a "WebTV" channels that plays videos at a set time. Requires a Plugin The fact that it takes a browser plugin to run the service could be a roadblock for some potential users, however. On the other hand, no other service that we are aware of offers free 1080p live streaming. Pricing As Dyyno's platform is based on a P2P architecture, it only makes sense for the company to offer the live streams for free. After all, the more users watch the stream, the easier it will be for Dyyno to deliver the video. The company does charge users who want to store more than 1GB of video for on-demand streaming on Dyyno's servers $10 per month. Dyyno does not charge for bandwidth. The P2P architecture doesn't lend itself for on-demand streaming, so Dyyno chose to charge for this aspect of its service. The company also offers business channels for $100 month, which include a total of 10 video channels and up to 100GB of storage. The company's high-end account, the Dyyno Broadcast station costs $1000 per month and allows users to store an archive of up to 1000GB of video and broadcast more than 100 concurrent video streams. Both the business and the broadcast accounts are stripped all Dyyno's branding. Dyyno plans to offer an ad revenue share model to companies that subscribe to these higher end accounts and who want to make use of the Dyyno's on-demand streaming solutions. Discuss

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Dyyno Launches Free 1080p Live Streaming Solution

Like us, you've probably just come out of a tryptophan-inspired coma on a relative's couch and are jonesing for some tech news. Unfortunately, the newsmakers are likely in the same position. While we cull the tubes for Internet-related happenings, check out this panoply of sites, apps, curiosities, trends and more. Happy Thanksgiving! Sponsor "Somewhat" Frank Gruber Is Thankful For His New Web Project Our good friend Frank Gruber has been working on Thankfulfor.com , a social gratitude journal. Gruber writes that he and partner Jen Consalvo wanted to create "a forum for expressing gratitude routinely as a foundation for happiness and well-being." Frank and Jen with Sir Richard Branson earlier this year. "People come to the site and post what they are thankful for to their personal journal of thanks. People can also choose to send each Thankfulfor post to their social network on Twitter (each post starts with the #thankfulfor hashtag) extending the good vibes far and wide." During the holiday season, Gruber's hosting a Gratitude Challenge for the remainder of the holiday season to encourage users around the world to spread the love. A great idea from a couple of great people! Helping the Hungry Through YouTube Videos Most of the Americans reading this are probably ridiculously stuffed with turkey and the associated edibles, but the good folks at YouTube recognized our annual gluttony as a great opportunity to help the less fortunate. Using their own homepage and blog as a platform, the site asked users, a.k.a. Video Volunteers , to create videos to promote the hunger-related nonprofit of their choice. along with the organization Feeding America and special curator David Arquette, YouTube has selected three submissions on the site. Here's one we liked: Next week, curator Morgan Freeman will kick off another round of submissions, this time focusing on human rights. Search Traffic Gets Seasonal, Economy Remains Slow Hitwise research director Heather Dougherty writes that year after year, Thanksgiving is the peak day for Internet visits to major retail websites, outstripping Black Friday, the day after Christmas, and other traditional big shopping days. Typically, for search engines, Thanksgiving also marks a peak in user searches for major retailers. However, yearly trends show significant drops in traffic and searches between 2007 and 2008. And, Doughtery writes, "The daily visits to the Retail 500 are down compared to last year leading up to the big holiday weekend." Check out the purple line on this graph; it represents search traffic for major retail brands leading up to the holiday, and it's measurably lower than in previous years: Also, the orange line on this graph shows site traffic stats for the same group of retailers. It, too, shows a decline from traffic in previous years. Take heart, online retailers! Stats for traffic coming from email marketing are actually quite robust. Are email marketers with cleverly presented bargains succeeding in these times of woe and want? This seems to be the case. SocialVibe's Facebook App Aims to Feed Folks in Need SocialVibe is all about helping brands and users create positive social change. In a typical SocialVibe setup, a brand "sponsors" users, who take small actions and engagements to raise money for the charity of their choice. The new SocialVibe Facebook app involves partnerships with multiple brands and allows users to help feed the hungry through the UN World Food Programme. Users create virtual Thanksgiving tables, choose one of three decor themes, pick food items to bring, and and invite friends. By engaging in simple, free brand interactions, users are able to furnish their and their friends' tables with turkeys, mashed potatoes, and all the traditional dishes - and best of all, each food item in the app equates to a specific number of meals the UN World Food Programme will be able to provide to hungry families and individuals. That wraps up this year's Thanksgiving around the web. What new sites, apps, or campaigns did you notice and love this year? Tell us all about them in the comments! Discuss

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Zoho is making another move to serve as the IT department for the small business market. Its latest offering is a service for staffing agencies and human resources to automate the process for hiring people. The new service, available now, is an applicant tracking system that helps staffing agencies and recruiting departments track job openings, resumes and candidates. The enterprise is stil heavily dependent on email and manual processes for any number of practices with human resources being no exception to the rule. Sponsor Zoho's strategy is to create a level of automation that makes a human resources functions manageable, a model they have used for the services they offer for sales, marketing and other functions in the enterprise. Zoho Recruit has a number of features including web forms; the ability to aggregate resumes from social sites and ways to track the status of a client within the application. Activity streams are emerging as a standard for new social enterprise products. In Zoho Recruit, though, the activity streams look more like simple views into the status of a job opening, profiles of other people on the team and the interviews on schedule for the day. Here's an overview of Zoho Recruit: It's clear that Zoho s gunning for the enterprise market with a focus on the small business sector. The company is increasingly perceived as a competitive threat to larger, more established companies. This is illustrated by a Microsft executive's remark earlier this month that Zoho is a "fake" Microsoft office. Zoho responded with FakeOffice.org , featuring a video they made in September, renaming it "Fake Office - the Movie." Zoho is a challenger to Salesforce.com in the small business market, whic has moved up market in the past few years. That approach has worked for Salesforce but in these markets the company faces deep pressures from larger competitors such as Oracle. Zoho faces its own competition but it has a unique approach. Its products are varied, giving customers the feeling that they are using a service that is customized for their particular needs. Plus, we like their videos. They explain their products. How about that? Discuss

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Zoho Makes Another Move to be the IT of the Small Business Market

Google just announced that YouTube can now automatically generate captions and subtitles for videos in English. For now, this feature is only enabled on a handful of partner channels, but Google plans to make this feature available for all users in the future. In the meantime, YouTube now also offers a new 'automatic caption timing' feature for all new uploads that makes it easier to add captions manually. You simply upload a text file with a transcript of the video and Google's speech recognition technology will figure out when those words are spoken and create captions based on this information. Sponsor As Google points out, YouTube's users currently upload over 20 hours of video every minute - and most of this video isn't accessible for users with hearing impairments. While uploaders could always add captions to their videos manually, only a very small minority of users ever did so. YouTube's speech recognition technology is based on the same speech-to-text algorithms that transcribe voicemails in Google Voice. You can also translate these captions into 51 languages. As expected, these captions aren't always perfect, but work surprisingly well on the videos that we have seen so far. If you want to have a look at how these captions work, have a look at one of the videos in the UC Berkeley , Stanford , MIT , Yale , UCLA , Duke , UCTV , Columbia , PBS , National Geographic , Demand Media , UNSW and Google & YouTube channels. Discuss

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YouTube Videos Get Automatic Captions