The Internet’s got lots of pretty pictures, though it could always use more. In the event that you have something prop-worthy which you’d like to contribute and immortalize, Redux has made it easy with our new Image Uploader.

New Image Uploader

Wanna share a Border Pic fresh from your imagination? Snap a picture of near-pornographic beauty that needs to be oogled? Everything you need to get it live before your fans is all in one place – streamlined, as it were. The images are stored safely on our servers, so your photographic punchline shall remain forever timeless, at least on a technical level. We are an equal opportunity format supporter as well, and we won’t discriminate based on size, color, or aperture. Check it out, and go up yourself.

Our vision has always been about personalizing the web’s entertainment via people, and how better to show others the personality you have to offer than through your profile. In that respect, we decided to give you a profile that looks a bit more, well, you.

A Prouder Profile

We’ve emphasized your own shares above all other activity, and have given it a blog-like feel. The result is something that proudly displays what you’ve collected online, and tells your friends and fans what you’re about. Since we feel that what you do on Redux is totally a reflection of you and your identity as a virtual entertainer, and we want to make your profile a more powerful means of sharing that identity with others.

Emboldened as you now are, take this tool and proudly go forth in making the world a more entertaining place, as only you can do.

Y’all wanted it, and we have finally made it. Highly demanded by our beloved community and our primal urge to categorize and classify, the Add to Channel feature is now live and ready to make the art of entertainment more manageable.

Now, you can be the one to decide what Channel(s) a post belongs in. This allows you to assign something to as many relevant audiences as you want, and lets others decide other places where your posts can be enjoyed too. Because something can very well be Awesome, LOL, FFFFFFUUUUU at the same time.

Add To Channel

I hope you appreciate is as much as I and the rest of our anal retentive office has. If chaos and disorganization is the enemy, than this little addition is a powerful weapon for the homeland.

When we first envisioned Redux, we mistakenly thought that were two kinds of things in this world: stuff, and stuff that deserves props. It sounds kind of silly in retrospect, considering the difference between a donut and this. To make it possible to lay the appropriate level of acclaim upon such mind-melting excellence, we are proudly introducing the Superprop.

Super Props!

I think you already get it from my pastry example, though there’s even more to it than you may think. Unlike freely-available normal props, Superprops can only be given by those who have been awarded Superprops from others. Indeed they are a rare and delectable honor, allowing others to vault your finest Redux moments accordingly, and for you to return the favor should you be so endowed. We think it’ll be a pretty fun feature for the community, and a good way to “mix it up” as it were.

Good luck earning a Superprop or two yourself, and happy ‘duxing.

Redux Releases it’s “Worst of the Web Awards” for 2009 – Honoring and Shaming the Best and the Absolute Worst of the Web for 2009
The web can be a magical place, filled with wondrous visions like Robocop Riding a Unicorn and a real world version of the kid from UP. It can also be a place of unspeakable horrors and crimes against humanity like a kitten being drop-kicked into a wall or unstoppable memes that should have died years ago. At Redux, our community is pretty vocal about what’s awesome on the web – not to mention what deserves to be sent back into the hole from whence it crawled.

It is in that spirit, as we close out the first decade of the new millennium, that we present the first annual “Worst of the Web Awards” for 2009 – (we’ve also got some of our “Best of the Web” awards, just to play nice)

So here they are, the worst of the worst. Those things that, once seen, cannot be un-seen. They crush your soul, they make angels cry, their creators should experience a slow death with a spork. In a word, these web finds encompass all that is “FAIL”.

5) Calvin Grows Up, Does Taxes, Kills Hobbes

for those of us who were kids with Calvin and Hobbes, this one hits a little too close to home.

Calvin Grows Up

4) Cheetah Lady

The labored breathing, the insane ranting, the final plea for a condo. Grab your weapons, folks, time to do some exotic game hunting.

Cheetah Lady

3) Brokencyde Makes us Want to Commit Homicyde

Did that 14 year old pile of streaked blonde hair and neon actually just CHOKE a girl? Are the lyrics just “let’s get freaky now” over and over and over again? We don’t remember anything about the four horsemen of the apocalypse cruising in an Escalade, but the end is definitely near.

Brokencyde = Homicyde

2) Fish deep-fried, somehow stays alive

You just know it’s staring at a “Hang in there, kid” poster on the wall.

Live Deep Fried Fish

1) A KITTEN!?! REALLY? YOU KICKED A KITTEN!?!

This was the video that started it all – The Redux community reacted so strongly to this video that comments and emails started pouring in calling for our heads. To put it to rest – yes, we hated this video. No, we did not kick the cat ourselves. And, yes, the cat is fine.

Too gruesome to show (WARNING: Extremely disturbing video after the jump. Do not click this link if you love kittens. If you hate kittens, go ahead and click. We’ll be quietly judging you.)

Computer still working? Haven’t smashed it or overloaded it sending hate-mail to Redux? Good! Allow us to make amends:

Presenting the Top web finds of the year, as voted on by the Redux community.

5) Football player tackles own teammate

Ok, so this is technically a “FAIL” but, honestly, try to watch and not laugh at the reaction of the kid who just realizes what he’s done.

Football player tackles own team mate!

4) Sick steel drummer

Awesome drummer pounds out the new theme song for CSI Jamaica.

Slick steel drummer

3) 91cm from himself

Man gets hit by a meteor and slips exactly 91cm from himself – What can we say? We’re suckers for art films

91cm from himself

2) The one man flash mob strikes!

Either this guy has cojones of steel or Asperger Syndrome. Whatever the cause, the result is awesome.

Redux one man Flash Mob

1) Epic Bohemian Rhapsody

Redux recreates Bohemian Rhapsody as only Redux can – We love our community, this is just one of the many reasons why.

Epic Bohemian Rhapsody

These days, everyone’s talking about control. And so just to be trendy, we decided to give you finer control over how and how often Redux notifies you. Dip into your Settings and revel in the granularity of your email, Facebook, Twitter, and MySpace selectivity.

Finer control over how and how often Redux notifies you!

Finer control over how and how often Redux notifies you!

This is particularly helpful when the word gets out about how awesome you are, and you suddenly get 100 fan notifications a day. Popularity can be a burden, and we’re doing what we can to make it easier for our best users to bear.

Team Redux

Today, we are proud to announce that we are opening Redux up to the public. We’ve been excited by the fantastic growth and reactions from the community we’ve been seeing, and decided it’s time to open the doors!

As we launch, we decided to step back and lay out what we want to build with our community. Below is an “Entertainment Manifesto” of our core beliefs, and we look forward to engaging with our community on this manifesto, and together, continuing to achieve these principles in the coming years.

1. Entertainment is moving online
More and more people are turning to the Internet for entertainment. Full-length legal episodes of TVshows are online, as well as millions of independent video producers. Even when Americans are watching TV, they’re surfing the web at the same time. A recent study confirmed that over 57% of TV viewers with Internet access used both TV & the Internet at the same time at least once a month. This opens up huge opportunities in the online media world for innovation and improvement in how people can find, consume, and interact with that media. At Redux, our goal is to “friend-source” the online entertainment process and give people an easy and engaging way to find the best media and links on the web, recommended by their friends and people who share their interests.

2. Cable has a few hundred videos playing at one time. The Internet has millions.
Cable Internet makes a few hundred channels available to you. On the Internet, there are millions of videos that exist. Over 20 hours of video is uploaded to YouTube every minute. We can’t simply channel surf anymore to discover content anymore — we would spend more time browsing for content than watching it. We need to watch the 1 hour of content we love, not the 1,200 hours of uninteresting crap. With Redux.com, we are helping sift through the boring and only deliver the good stuff.

3. We use Friend-Sourcing in real life – why not online?
Friends are far better at knowing what we’d like to watch than any program or television exec. When I know what I’m looking for, search is great (eg. If I want to watch a hockey game, I can go to any number of sites and find it streaming online). But when I don’t know what I’m looking for (eg. I just want to watch hockey, but don’t have a game in mind), it’s much better to hear from friends and people that share my interest. A cable programmer 300 miles away doesn’t know your interests nearly as well as your friends. That’s why we’ve friend-sourced your entertainment on Redux. We want to put your friends and people that share you interest in control of your TV.

4. Entertainment is meant to be socialized
Content is made to be talked about. Watching a man dance around the world is fun, but it’s equally fun to talk about it around the watercooler. Perhaps someone saw another similar video, or someone shared that same experience. A few years ago when we could only watch TV, we had to talk about it in other places — over the watercooler, or perhaps in a forum. But now, socialization of content can happen at the same time as content is being watched. With Redux, you can comment, give props, or even create a media-based conversation where a friend shares a link and you share a video in response, which your friend can then play right in that conversation.

5. Online Entertainment is being consumed differently than it is on TV
The majority of American households use their TV at least once a month, and for many households, the TV is almost always on. But most Americans don’t watch TV when they’re away from home or at work. A growing number of online visitors, however, are starting to “snack” on video entertainment while at work. Maybe they’re taking a lunch or coffee break, or perhaps they’re sneaking in a short entertainment snack while they’re catching up on a few emails. Unlike a TV episodes, which takes at least 30 minutes to watch(with commercials), short form content can be consumed in a couple minutes, and is perfectly suited for online users taking short breaks. No long are we waiting until we get home to watch video — we’re watching in short spurts throughout the day. Of course, the average Redux viewer spends more than an hour tuned into our service, so maybe we’re reducing productivity well beyond our expectations.

6. Online Entertainment will start appearing on TVs
Though many online visitors are consuming online entertainment at work on the go, a growing number of households are connecting their computer or internet-enabled set-top boxes to their TV. As many as 10M American households have connected their computer to their TV at one point. And unlike when we’re at work, when we’re watching entertainment on the living room TV, we’re not looking to just snack. We need to be able to sit back in the arm chair, and passively watching entertainment as we relax from a hard day, or work on something in the background. On your TV set, it’s impossible to sift through all of the content online to find one 10 second video you’ll enjoy, but if you tune into your friend-sourced Redux TV mode, you’re set to just sit back and watch as nature intended.

At Redux our vision is that when we turn on our desktop computer, mobile phone, or TV entertainment is delivered to us through the recommendations of friends and people that share our interest.

Our launch is an important step in our journey to achieve that vision, and we look forward to working with our community to get there. Thank you for all of your support you have already given to help us create and enjoy the great product we see today.

Redux is now giving more credit where it’s due. Now, the “item view” page for every share you make on Redux has a whole new smattering of other goodies you’ve shared. The result is that each time someone passes on one of your shares to Twitter, Facebook, MySpace, or a friend via email, a floodgate into your twisted personality is opened that may leave the recipient helplessly entertained for hours.

A personalized smattering

The point is not just to offer up more entertainment, but also to show that behind the entertainment lies a trail of personalized content selections that only Redux has. While we ain’t so bad judged on entertainment alone, our real power lies with the people and their personality. This personality is represented in the tens of thousands of users and the hundreds of thousands of things they’re sharing, saying, and propping. Now, it’s easier to discover those personalities and get helplessly entertained yourself.

No, no, don’t worry…we weren’t bought out by everyone’s favorite international media conglomerate. Rather, we’ve taken your advice to clean up the Channels page straight to the site, and just in time for the weekend. What was once an endless Babylonian list of quasi-sorted options is now a nicely organized grouping of channels we know you’ll like, channels we know others like, and channels that are coming up.

Our Channels are clearer so your decisiveness doesn't have to be

This is just the first of many steps in organizing the vast supply of content our community gives us every day, so expect lots more to come. Even better, tell us what you’d else you’d like to see. We’re always happy to oblige.

Team Redux

Unbelievably, the feature that we’re most proud of and invested in is the one that has yet to get a proper blog shot-out. And that feature would be you, the proud Redux community.

Without our faithful troupe of entertainment fanatics (and the feedback they bestow), there wouldn’t be any Redux at all, much less a good one. You guys have pushed Redux so far it’s almost embarrassing to look at where we started, before you came along. Months of collaboration later, you guided us to where we are today, and have rewarded us with well over half-a-million shares.

So, this post is for you.

The proud Redux community.

See the full size image here: (warning, its a freaking huuuge file).

No matter what hour of the night/morning it is here at the office, we can always count on you guys to keep us entertained, sane, and motivated to code even harder.

Thanks.

Team Redux