What we thought might have been an AIR app in the making, may be something entirely different. With social video sharing sites such as Youtube and Vimeo it can be hard to keep the recommendations flowing. Hundreds of videos are added to these sites daily, but only a select few are really worth our time. With no easy way to sort through these uploads, Vimeo is asking the community for help in finding a solution. Today the site has announced the launch of Vimeo Toys. These toys aims to give users an interactive and visually appealing way to find more video content. Here's a look at what's available.

The VimeoLand toy gives a look at recent happenings on Vimeo. VimeoLand displays an interactive landscape of characters that represent the latest actions from Vimeo users. Hovering your mouse over a character will display a pop-up containing one of the following recent actions:

• A comment
• A like
• Recent signup
• Recent upload

Each action includes a link to the profile of the user who completed the action and a link to the video that the action took place on. What's a little random and unique about VimeoLand is an airplane that flies back and forth above the landscape. Clicking the plane will cause a random video to be dropped from the plane's cargo. It's pretty nifty. Vimeo fans will find this particular toy to be very useful and entertaining.

Currently there's only one other toy available. If you're looking for something less flashy than VimeoLand, we recommend Pulse.

We're interested in seeing what other unique visuals developers will create with Vimeo Toys. To help developers get started, Vimeo has listed a sample XML file with over 50 activity items to choose from. Vimeo's team of workers will decide whether or not your toy is worth being featured on Vimeo. While this isn't a problem for us, we'd rather see the community take a vote on what stays and what goes.

What we think would be really interesting to see is for Vimeo and developers to take things to the next level. By this we mean seeing a visual graph of what our friends, or a select group of users, are up as a Vimeo Toy. The current offerings are still a little too random for our tastes. Nevertheless, we're happy with what we see so far and look forward to see what else is next.

Andy Plesser / Beet.TV:
Breaking News: Satellite to Gather Exclusive Images for Google Earth Blasts off in California...Larry Page and Sergey Brin at Launch  —  VANDENBERG AIR FORCE BASE, CA — A Delta 2 rocket carrying a GeoEye satellite lifted off at 11:50 a.m. PDT today.  The imaging satellite will provide mapping exclusively to Google.

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Robert Scoble / Scobleizer:
Startups: your web site sucks  —  I visited each website from the list of Demo finalists.  —  Boy, do they suck.  Really, really suck.  —  Does no one understand how to market themselves?  —  It's amazing to me that not a single Demo website has learned from the lessons of Gary Vaynerchuk's Winelibrary.tv.

Jacqui Cheng / Infinite Loop:
On iTunes 8 and hunches; also iPhone 2.1 for Tuesday  —  On Friday, we posted a short roundup of what's expected in iTunes 8 thanks to the rumortastic stylings of Kevin Rose.  The Pandora-like Genius feature, Genius Sidebar, Grid view, and more are all said to be included.

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NBC seems to be having a change of heart this week. The network recently wrapped up their streaming of the Olympics using Microsoft's Silverlight technology. However if you tuned in for this week's NFL season opener, NBC was using Adobe's Flash technology instead of Silverlight. Making some do a double take, here's a look at why NBC left Silverlight in a flash (pun intended).

As we stated, NBC took a chance on Silverlight to stream the Olympic ceremonies for online and mobile viewers. While this was a great opportunity for Microsoft to promote its Silverlight platform, it wasn't enough for NBC. According to SAI,
"Microsoft, meanwhile, said that during the Olympics, 40 million US to visitors NBCOlympics.com didn't yet have Silverlight installed."

NBC has already begun switching back to Adobe Flash for the start of the NFL season. Yet their efforts don't seem to be paying off at the moment with reports of video playback for the NFL season starter game being too horrible to watch.

We all know that at least 90% of computer users have Adobe Flash installed. It's easy to see why NBC would want to switch back. The partnership between Microsoft and NBC was likely more beneficial to Microsoft in the end. One of the downsides for NBC was that users tend to become either wary or lazy about downloading new extensions for a website. This is especially true if the website was working just fine with previous extensions only days before. However, with a rocky start to switching back, NBC online sports fans are probably wondering if it's even worth the effort anymore.

Nicholas Carlson / Valleywag:
NBC dumps Microsoft Silverlight after Olympics  —  NBC streamed all its NBCOlympics.com videos using Microsoft's Silverlight backend tech, but the network dumped Microsoft before last night's NFL kickoff — streamed live over NBCSports.com and NFL.com — opting to use Adobe Flash instead.  Why?

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With all the news about Chrome, it's been pretty easy to forget about one of Firefox's recent releases: Ubiquity. We gave Ubiquity a rave review for giving Firefox a whole new UI. The standard commands, or "verbs", that come with Ubiquity are great. Yet we couldn't help but want more. Developers have been working around the clock to produce some fantastic custom verbs for Ubiquity. Here is ReadWriteWeb's list of the top picks of custom Ubiquity verbs!

Ubiquity already comes with built in search commands for Youtube, Amazon, and Flickr. Here are our top picks for searching media sites using custom Ubiquity verbs:

• Last.FM - Allows users to search the Last.FM music network for artists pages.
• Seeq - Search Seeqpod for music.
• Vimeo - Allows users to search Vimeo for matching video results.
• Stickam - Watch the livestream of your Stickam friends no matter what page you're on.
• Netflix Search - Search Netflix for movies.

So far Ubiquity only allows you to interact with one social network: Twitter. With these custom verbs you'll be able interact with more popular social networks.

• Ping. FM - Update your default Ping.FM status.
• Jaiku - Update your Jaiku status.
• Identica - Update your identi.ca status
• Facebook - Update your Facebook status or locate a friend.
• FriendFeed - Post a link or comment to your FriendFeed stream.
• Twitter and Link Shortner - Extends Ubiquity's default Twitter functionality to include a link shortening command.
• Myspace Person Search - Search for someone on Myspace.

Outside of Digg, there are no other ways to share news and links with friends. So for those of you on Reddit, Delicious, and other related sites, we have just the verbs for you!

• StumbleUpon - Stumble the current page you're viewing. Requires StumbleUpon extension.
• Sphinn - Submit an article to Sphinn.
• Reddit - Submit a link to Reddit
• Twine - Post an article to Twine.
• Delicious - Bookmark an article with tags to your delicious account.
• Share On - Share a link on any of the following sites: Facebook, Reddit, Digg, Delicious, Slashdot, or Fark.
• Most Popular on Delicious - Get a quick overview of the current 10 most popular delicious bookmarks.
• Google Bookmark - Add the current page you're viewing to your Google Bookmarks.
• Instapaper - Save a page for later to your Instapaper account.
• Soup.io - Bookmark a page to your Soup.io account.
• Tumblr - Share a ton of link love to your Tumblelog.
• Check Slashdot - Get a quick overview of either three of the latest articles on Slashdot or any number of articles that you specify.

While searching for the best Ubiquity verbs we came across a ton that were great, but couldn't be categorized. Without further ado here are other notable verbs:

• Subscribe via Google Reader
• Multiple URL Shortners (TinyURL, isgd, Bitly, Hurl)
• EveryStock Photo Search
• Find Movie Times Near You
• W3C Validator
• Torrent Search
• 30 Boxes
• Remember The Milk

We're sure you'll be able to find a ton of new Ubiquity verbs to subscribe to. What we'd like to know is what verbs you're already using and what verbs you hope to see in the near future. To start the list, we're already using quite a few of the built in verbs and most of the social media custom verbs listed here. In the future we'd like to see verbs for Diigo, sharing items via Google Reader, and more video related verbs. Let's hear what's on your list.

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