14 DAY TRIAL // Founded in late 2001 by Kevin April and Holger Ehlis, as a Macintosh enthusiast site. During its existence, Spymac provided news, reviews, message boards, email, Web hosting and image gallery services, while the community's members were able at one point to host their own online calendar, blog, photo gallery and forum. In April, 2004, Spymac launched the first public 1GB email service, called Spymac Mail that is now out of service. Anyway, despite the products and services that Spymac tried to offer and proved to be unsuccessful, its user base is pretty large and yesterday they came up with something completely new!
Available as a beta version to the press for a little more than a week, Spymac Leapfrog now became public, and according to Spymac's press release, this is the "first international Web 2.0 community for video chat, movies & music". OK? but why would you use Leapfrog, after all, since there is the mighty YouTube, as well as a lot of other similar sites?
Since money makes the world go round, let's talk about money first. By uploading content and getting it viewed and rated by as many users as possible, you can earn money, and Leapfrog is expected to pay its uploaders 100,000$ in the first month! Although initially a Macintosh enthusiast site, as I said, the new Spymac is opened to everybody, working on both Macs and PCs, and available in more than fifteen languages, including Arabic, Chinese, Czech, Korean, Russian, Romanian or Turkish.
One of the most interesting features is the face to face video chat that works without the need of any additional software or setup. Since we're living in an Apple world, the iPods couldn't have been forgotten here, so Leapfrog allows users to download iPod-ready movies, songs and pictures that are also compatible with Sony's PSP.
According to Kevin April, "Leapfrog simplifies the technology behind different formats, encoders and players, making it easier for people to enjoy online communication.", but I must say that I am worried about one thing - although the new Spymac still contains content for iPod, where's the Mac part? Having over one million members can make Spymac forget where it started, or if you're looking for Mac news, you'll just have to go and visit the Classic version of the site?