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YUDOmagic is a relatively new (June) service developed to provide a meeting place for magicians to learn to tricks, and to teach others their favorite illusions. YUDOmagic’s main focus is to provide magic performances and tutorials through their collection of community provided magic videos.

For those who are really interested in magic, YUDOmagic has a special “restricted vault” area with special magic tricks. Users can gain access to this special area by donating or by uploading a magic tutorial of their own. YUDO has also put together a list of magic products available trhough Amazon, with products like the “Rising Card Deck” and the “Magic Pencil.” A public forum is available, although it seems relatively unused at this point.

As far as videos go, YUDO already has a pretty good collection going. The videos are separated into categories like bar tricks, street magic, card tricks, and for kids. The videos are hosted on BrightCove, so for those of you familiar with the player, I believe it is nicer than YouTube’s. For all of the aspiring magicians out there, YUDOmagic is a great niche service.

Update: A trusty-tipper informs us that they’re familiar with the person who runs FacebookSecret, pointing out that that person definitely didn’t get the leak from WMDTalk, and that they’ve had several people contribute code to them since. So, the search is still on. If you have any more information on this, don’t hesitate to contact us.

As many blogs reported earlier this week, a small snippet of code from Facebook was “leaked” to the public. According to a recent post from the crew at Mashable, the leaker was Trae McNeely.

Evidently, Trae McNeely is the owner of WMD talk, a “make money” forum, and has worked for the Slash Gear Blog in the past. Through a little creative digging, the Mashable crew was able to confirm at least part of Trae’s story after he cited them to the WMD Talk forum which reads:

“There are rumors about who leaked the Facebook code the other day. Well your answer is me. Actually, “leaked” isn’t the correct term. I didn’t have any access to their servers and I don’t know any employees. Despite what you may think about my website I don’t hack and I’ve never had intentions to. If you look at Digg and do a little searching you’ll notice that the code was posted on this site wmdtalk at the following address http://www.wmdtalk.com/showthread.php?p=1319 which has been taken down.

So I posted it thinking this is something I and other can study. Was it wise, no, risky yes! When you really sit down and think about it the source code showed up on my browser not because someone leaked it to me or I took it. The code was the fault of Facebook. They must have been updating their servers or a database was down. Now, I submitted this 2 or 3 days ago. I posted it thinking, “oh well it won’t be a big deal”. Well, within several hours I received an email threatening legal action against me.”

Mashable explained why they think the story is legitimate:

“Although we were dubious of the story at first (it’s posted on a “make moneyâ€? forumâ€?), we think this is legit. McNeely claims that he posted the code to the forums at the weekend, and that story got six Diggs. It was then reposted up by FacebookSecrets, whose story got thousands of Diggs. A quick check on Digg (search for PHP or another unique term) shows that the first Facebook PHP story was indeed a link to those forums.”

The leaked code only powers the Facebook user interface, it offers no useful insight into the inner workings of Facebook according to an official statement from Facebook.

Lucky for us, the National Center for Education Statistics has a kids section. More specifically, the kids section of the site has a great chart/graph creator that both adults and children will find useful.

The NCES Kids Zone “Create a Graph” center makes creating simple or even complicated graphs very painless. The Create a Graph service enables the creation of bar, line, area, pie, and XY graphs. After selecting the type of graph to make, the simple tabbed layout leads the user through each step of the graph creation process. These steps include design, data, labels, preview, and print/save. The graphs are very customizable, allowing for different backgrounds, 2D and 3D graphs, different shapes, and different legend locations. The color and font associated with each label can be changed as well.

After the perfect graph is created, the Create a Graph service lets users print or download the graph in many formats, or email the graph to others. This handy and dead simple tool will help you at some point, and best of all, it is completely free and requires no registration of any kind.

Coordinating task assignments between multiple users on a complicated website is a difficult job. With Taskee, web developers can assign, comment, and manage tasks directly on their website. Taskee makes it easier and cheaper to collaborate during the website testing process. As web developers know, the testing process may not be a process so much as a way of life.

Taskee works like this: After visiting the Taskee login page, you are shown a list of the pages with assigned tasks. The Taskee control panel resides above the pages of your site as you test them, waiting to be accessed via a small button in the top right corner of the screen. When a tester finds a problem on a page of the website, the tester assigns the problem to a developer. These tasks can be commented on, and the developers are notified of the task via email as soon as it is created. Each created task is URL specific, allowing for quick and efficient problem solving.

Taskee is really useful, and very creative. The simple way each task is assigned to a specific URL allows for simple multiple user problem solving. Taskee can help anyone coding a page, or even just someone who may notice a spelling error occasionally. The simple task assignment interface allows even the most novice website “admin” to assign tasks to others more suited to fix the problem. Taskee can even manage multiple projects, a great feature for developers collaborating on multiple sites.

Give Taskee a try, there is a free workable demo and a video demonstrating the service on the main page.

Google Pack, the simple software installer and updater from Google has added the StarOffice software suite. StarOffice, developed by Sun Microsystems, was released in 2000 and eventually became the basis for the hugely popular OpenOffice.org project.

StarOffice 8 includes word processing, spreadsheet, presentation, drawing and database applications. Typically, the software costs $69.95, but will be free as a part of the Google Pack.

As the Google Operating System blog pointed out, “[i]t will be interesting to see why Google didn’t choose to include OpenOffice.org, the primary difference between StarOffice and OpenOffice.org being that StarOffice includes some proprietary components lke clip-art graphics, fonts, templates and tools for Microsoft Office migration.”

Hopefully Google will find a way to integrate this new addition to the Google Pack lineup, Google Docs, and a future online storage system (still waiting Google).

Jumpchart is an interactive collaborative wireframe service from Paste Interactive designed to help web developers and content creators working together building the architecture of a website.

The problem with the traditional website organization process, as described by the developers of Jumpchart, is that they are not interactive, and don’t carry momentum into the build phase. Jumpchart replaces the typical paper flowcharts, sitemaps, and wireframes website builders are accustomed to using.

Jumpchart also makes working with picky clients much easier, allowing for visualization and approval of site organization. Instead of trying to explain to clients how the site will be organized, the client can click through a preview of the sitemap with all of the page, subpages, and images intact. After all of the content in your Jumpchart is set, the whole Jumpchart you have constructed can be exported. This means no more re-typing text, no more copying and pasting, just pure clean valid XHTML and CSS. Changing a site is much easier in Jumpchart as well, moving whole sections of the site with a single click.

Although Jumpchart is currently in private beta, I recommend developers sign up to give the beta a try.

XMG Image is a brand new and very interest photo management service. Users upload either single photos, multiple photos, or even zip files of photos.

Once a photo is uploaded, XMG Image provides a wide array of editing tools. Simple functions like crop, rotate and resize are one click away, and more advanced features like image enhancement are available. As images are changed, XMG Image saves older images so users can revert after mistakes.

XMG Image is very intuitive, does have a great AJAX feel, and adds some great features typically only seen in desktop applications. Organization of the photos is very simple with the great tagging and live search features. XMG even supports dowloading of each photo in a gallery in zip format. Sharing images is a snap too, with direct posting to Myspace, Friendster, or Facebook, and direct posting to blogs.

To see an example of a simple 2 picture gallery I created using XMG, click here.

Dailymotion, the world’s largest independent video sharing site, and Skype, the peer-to-peer telephone network, announced a partnership today. This partnership will establish a Dailymotion channel on Skype, giving users the ability to share videos from Dailymotion’s Mood Channels. This collaboration will show up in version 3.5 of Skype for Windows.

The Mood Channels on Dailymotion include content selected from submissions received from Dailymotion’s MotionMaker program, which identifies and rewards the best content submitted to DailyMotion. Each of these Mood Channels will be localized to key markets around the world.

CEO and cofounder of Dailymotion Benjamin Bejbaum said, “With this partnership, two of the largest online global communities have come together to create a new experience in video sharing…From now on, Skype users will have access to more than 3 million videos, including premium content and exclusive artwork from our MotionMakers. Skype users will discover that creativity is one of our core values.” This should be a great new addition to the Skype platform, giving Skype users access to over 20,000 new videos uploaded daily.

Thanks to Sherry for the tip.

The New York Post is reporting that New York Times Co. is planning to stop charging the users of the Times “Select” premium service. According to this article from Yahoo, Times Select membership rose from 220,000 in April to more than 224,500 in June of this year. A membership to the Times Select service cost users about $8 per month.

The New York Times has made some great changes in the last few months including the addition of MyTimes. MyTimes is a free personalization service allowing users to create a personal “start page” of sorts including RSS feeds from across the web.

This speculation arises after similar speculation regarding the Wall Street Journal and its membership online content. However, as Adario at Wired mentioned, “this could be a legitimate early tip on the NY Times’ future, or just a bit of artificial pressure applied to the market by the Post.” I guess we have to wait and see.

Are you proud of your pet, or would you like to meet other pet owners? PetOwnr enables pet owners to share information about their pets. Similar to other less furry social networks, you can post pictures, share stories, and connect with others.

Each pet’s page can be filled with some specific information. A basic description of your pet’s breed, age and colors can be added. You can list your pet’s hobbies and even your pet’s diet. The forums are a great place for all animal lovers, with dedicated topics such as choosing a pet, legal matters, health and medical, and grooming. The pets stories section gives users a place to tell funny, interesting, or just plain crazy stories.

Where Dogster and Catster let you communicate with other canine and feline owners, PetOwnr connects you with owners of any type of pet. Do you and your ferret feel left out? Give PetOwnr a try.