Xtranormal launches mashup site to put words in the mouths of celebrities
I guess we don’t have enough silly stuff on the Internet. Xtranormal is adding more silliness today as it launches Mashface.com, a site where users can create mash-ups that splice together their own voices and jokes with the faces of politicians. Now you can get your favorite politicians or celebrities to mouth just about anything.
The site makes it simple to create mash-ups. You choose a photo of a famous person. Then you use your microphone-enabled webcam to record a message or joke. You can insert your own eyes, mouth and voice into a picture. The site “mashes” them, or basically merges them together. When you play it back, your voice and lip movements are superimposed onto the famous person’s face. Then you can push a button and share it with your friends.
The site is in keeping with the mash-up trend, but it faces a ton of competition. We’ve already written about rivals such as video mash-up site Omnisio, Big Stage, and Hair Mixer.
The question is whether people are really going to fall in love with this sort of humor. The site’s major assets are that it’s simple and it’s just as dumb as a lot of other kinds of mash-up sites out there. You can use it for silly humor or intelligent satire. The best pieces are displayed in the “Hall of Mash.”
Here are some examples of Mashface in action with Barack Obama, John McCain and Paris Hilton, and Brad PItt and Angelina Jolie. It’s worth a laugh. But I wouldn’t expect this to set the Internet on fire. Xtranormal chief executive Richard Szalwinski said it was done by his company’s Flash developers on a lark. He believes it will be a white-label platform that businesses such as ad agencies can use to create cute or edgy marketing campaigns. Xtranormal is a Montreal-based company started by Szalwinski in 2006. Xtranormal creates tools to let people create 3-D animated cartoons. Szalwinski said the Mashface.com idea didn’t fit with Xtranormal’s own business; hence, he calls it the “bastard child” of Xtranormal.
Next Story: Q&A with PlayFirst’s John Welch on making game consoles obsolete and making gamers out of everyone
Previous Story: Vysr puts OpenSocial apps in its browser widget
About the Author, Dean Takahashi
Dean is lead writer for GamesBeat at VentureBeat. He covers video games, security, chips and a variety of other subjects. Dean previously worked at the San Jose Mercury News, the Wall Street Journal, the Red Herring, the Los Angeles Times, the Orange County Register and the Dallas Times Herald. He is the author of two books, Opening the Xbox and the Xbox 360 Uncloaked. Follow him on Twitter at @deantak, and follow VentureBeat on Twitter at @venturebeat.