Is the next emerging trend in web services going to be of the micropayment kind? If anything, Amazon’s Alexa Site Thumbnail service points to the idea of offering small value products at a very small cost.

For just $0.0002 per thumbnail, you can display website thumbnails on your site from Alexa’s database using SOAP or REST. If the site isn’t yet indexed, they’ll index it within 24 hours. This is mostly intended for sites that would benefit from having screenshots of other sites, like BuzzShout, for instance. This is unlike Browsershots, which is aimed at developers.

So, is 20 cents for 1000 thumbnails worth it? Perhaps, if you’re a large site that requires continuously updating thumbnails. But for most of us, it wouldn’t be too hard to cobble up a script to take automatic screenshots similar to what Browsershots is doing.

I say that Amazon should provide the screenshots free, just like with their Alexa graphs. I doubt that monetizing thumbnails will really be worth it for them, and, in the end, providing a service like this for free would gain the favor of web developers everywhere.

On another note, I’m sure Google has a vast thumbnail database that magnitudes bigger than Amazon’s. They just need to release the API.

You’ll notice that the front door of BuzzShout now has a poll. That poll was made on Vizu, and we have also signed on to be their content partner. We’ll be updating our polls once, sometimes twice, a week. We would love your feedback and ideas for polls — email us at info@buzzshout.com.

Neither James nor myself knew much about Vizu before meeting co-founder Dan Beltramo. We were already thinking of adding polls to BuzzShout, but it was going to be something that we would try to implement independently. However, since we love trying out new web apps, we decided to give Vizu a whirl. We were very impressed.

Vizu walks you through each stage of creating a poll, while giving you total control of the look and feel. You first create the question, then choose if it’s an “opinion” poll or a “prediciton” poll. Then choose keywords and categories so that your poll is easy to find on the Vizu site and archives. You are able to add relevant pictures or links to your poll. A Vizu poll on your site is free with registration.

One of the nicest features for exporting a poll to your blog or webpage is that the voting process can be done inline using AJAX. Visitors won’t need to reload a different page to vote, and will instead see the results of the poll right on the site. As a web developer that likes to keep users surfing on my site, this is a must-have feature.

By allowing anyone to create polls, Vizu has also plunged into the poll aggregation space. Since they have the entire database of polls at their disposal, they can feature interesting and popular polls like “How do you feel about GM’s decision to end production of the H1 Hummer?”. As their database and user base grows, marketers will find it useful to see what the public feels about their company, products, and services. Indeed, Vizu should monetize on this in the future by forging the Surveys 2.0 space.

Vizu’s ease of use will draw in a wide range of users, from bloggers to marketers to MySpace users. It will be interesting to see if they can make ripples in the age old industry of surveying.

Online applications like Gliffy, Google Spreadsheets, and Num Sum allow users to free themselves of the desktop, allowing universal access to documents via a browser. But here’s the real question: how many people are actually using these apps for heavy duty work? I’m willing to bet that most uses of these online apps are for casual documents that don’t require tedious work. The UI responsiveness of browser apps still leaves something to be desired–desktop apps are still king in this category. I certainly wouldn’t look forward to editing big spreadsheets in Num Sum for long periods of time. This is exactly the problem Xcellery solves by combining the best features of both desktop and web applications.

The key to Xcellery’s usefulness is that, in addition to their online browser editing capability, users are able to directly edit documents in Excel. Simply click the “Double click opens in Excel” button, allow macros from Xcellery, and you’ll be editing natively in Excel. The integration is seamless, and new Xcellery-specific buttons are added in Excel that let you view the editing history, import existing Excel documents, and save and create new spreadsheets.

Of course, if you don’t have Excel, you can still edit the documents in the browser. Xcellery combines the collaborative and sharing environment of an online app with the responsiveness of a desktop app. For most users, being able to directly edit documents in Excel will make Xcellery a keeper. I would love it if all the other online web applications could hook up with my local apps. Writely with Word and Gliffy with Visio. Editing in a browser can certainly be drag–the simple solution is to let users have the choice of editing on their desktop app, and use the online editing capability when its convenient. Xcellery is trying extend Excel, not replace it.

What’s next for Collaborall, the makers of Xcellery? On their FAQ, the say that

Our vision is to provide a simple and effective collaboration package integrating with Microsoft Office.

We should be on the lookout for Collaborall equivalents of the other Office products. Personally, I’ll be excited to see if they can truly integrate the entire Office suite online.

Community video sharing is already hitting its stride with the likes of YouTube, Vimeo, and vSocial. But, what about traditional TV media and the promise of IP/TV? Jeff Pulver has a great post detailing some places on the net where you can get access to clips and videos from everyone’s favorite dinosaur tube.

Unlike TVU networks and other bittorrent style TV streaming, the list sticks to media that can be legally obtained. In many cases, the content providers are directly allowing access to a limited number of clips, and sometimes full access with a monthly fee.

The real issue here is that all this TV content is spread across too many sources. For example, when I think of looking for clips I don’t immediately head over to the UPN video spotlight. It would be great if someone took up the task of aggregating all the videos on one site. Companies like Gotuit Media will be the ones dominating the broadband video market.

It will certainly be interesting how the online video storm will shape up. Will traditional media companies successfully make the jump to the web? Or will smaller startups like YouTube eventually integrate professional media within their system?

I found out about Eons from a CNET News.com article and then a Mashable post. Eons states to be the place where people 50+ go to get things done. After arriving to the site, the first thing I was asked to do was input my age, sex, and zip code. Since I wanted to check it out, I put my parents birth year–1951–and was able to proceed onto the site. I don’t know whether they allow you to view the site if you are under 50.

While CNET News.com and Mashable both call Eons a social networking site, I would contend that they are more of a media portal for the boomer crowd. (Update: In his post, Pete Cashmore does eventually say Eons is a portal, and compares it to MySpace which he asserts is also now a portal. I politely disagree with that as I would never go to MySpace to find quality content). Eons definitely does have some social networking features, but the focus seems to be the broad range of content within several different channels: Fun, Love, Money, Body, Goals, Obits (short for obituaries), and LifeMap. There is also a cRANKy search engine which is supposed to give more relevant searches for people above 50.

Other “cool” (AKA keen or groovy) features include a longevity calculator, which will estimate how long you’ll live based on what types of activities you indulged in during your life, and the ability to change the size of the font to make for easier reading. After making your goals you will be able to see other users who have similar goals and whether or not they are located near you. Maybe it would be cool to add a baby boomer Meetro to the site. 

A short, funny post about Eons can be read here.