Written on February 19, 2008 – 8:51 am
Boris Veldhuijzen van Zanten,
Could it be? Could Live.com become a bigger web destination than Google.com? If you look at Alexa (Reach: Percentage of Internet users who visit Google and Live.com) it certainly seems so. Just recently Google had to give up its second place on the top 10 list of websites to Youtube but now it has been surpassed in rank even by Live.com and is currently number 4 on the list. As you can see I used a very unscientific method to predict the daily reach for both Google.com and Live.com and Live is clearly on the rise.
Not all data on Compete shows Live.com as the winner but this one (pages per visit) certainly does:
I know these numbers are debatable and are more indications of web traffic and usage but even so, this would have been unthinkable in November 2005 when Live.com launched. Google has long been considered the only viable search destination. My guess is that in 2008 more and more people will start considering alternatives such as Live.com, Yahoo.com and maybe even new players like ManagedQ which we profiled here earlier.
I hope you like that post!
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Written on February 10, 2008 – 10:40 pm
Boris Veldhuijzen van Zanten,
Youtube has an alternative way to browse their content called the ‘Warp Player’. You can access it directly on http://youtube.com/warp_speed or via a small button that you only see when you watch a Youtube video full-screen. It’s that strange icon, with three dots, bottom left, on the right side of the Play button.
Although there is a link on the front page to the Warp Player I can’t seem to find any other information about it. Nothing on the blog and nothing on the dedicated Warp Player page. Not even ONE mention of ‘Warp’ in the extensive Youtube help files.
Maybe Youtube isn’t very proud of their Warp Speed player or they just think it is so self explanatory, like the Play button, that it doesn’t need any further introduction. I can image some people missed it so here is a Youtube Demo Video of a Youtube Video feature
If you want to experience it for yourself click this move, then click the full screen button and then click the Warp Player icon.
Written on January 15, 2008 – 1:04 pm
Ernst-Jan Pfauth, editor in chief
I don’t know what it’s like in the rest of the world, yet in Holland the wireless Internet coverage still isn’t very good. It even seems like that when you’re in desperate need of some entertainment - in the train or bus stop in the middle of nowhere -, the feeling of disappointment is stronger than the satisfied feeling when it IS available. And I’m sure I’m not alone in this.
So it’s not too surprising that developers world-wide work on applications that make the off line live just a little bit easier. Tooble is a recent result of those ambitions: ‘YouTube comes to iPod’.
Tooble automatically downloads, converts and imports any YouTube video to play on your video iPod, iPhone, AppleTV, or even on your computer with iTunes. Of course you could already watch videos on the iPhone and iPod Touch using GPRS/EDGE, but the only joy that comes from that is making up original ways of swearing about the damn lack of speed.
Google won’t be amused about this service. They’re probably working behind the scenes on some sort of YouTube function for off line applications service Google Gears. And now this small start-up called Gridlock LLC came up with it first.
Thank you guys, for entertaining me during those awful hours of no Internet connection. Want to meet these heroes from Gridlock/ Tooble? You can shake their hands at stand S-1338 at the Macworld Conference in San Fransisco this week.
Written on January 13, 2008 – 2:53 pm
Robert Gaal, co-founder of Wakoopa
Are you a saxophonist, pianist, trumpeter or a skilled musician falling in a non-rock category? Then consider yourself summoned. The Foo Fighters want to create the first ever user-generated orchestra at their next performance of The Pretender at the Grammy Awards, and they’re using Youtube and MySpace to do so. Actually, it’s one of the few instances where those two platforms work together. The post on the Youtube blog doesn’t link to MySpace though, so don’t get any funny ideas.
Upload your video here and cross your fingers. If you will excuse me, I have an instrument to master. Just like these guys.
Written on January 12, 2008 – 12:02 am
Mike Sheetal, Next Web WebTipr in Japan
As we already in 2008, it’s a good time to look back and see how much the Internet landscape has changed in the last year in Japan.
Internationally there have been some big shakeups, led by the dramatic effects of the meteoric rise of Facebook to prominence, both good and bad. On these shores, too, there has been plenty of online action, so we’ve rounded up some of the events that have reshaped the Japanese Internet landscape this year.
The big hit
Nico Nico Douga
Any discussion about the top Internet stories of 2007 starts and finishes with Nico Nico Douga. This video-sharing site is uniquely Japanese, blending online video-sharing with user-created, short chat-like text comments that are synced to the movies, allowing whole conversations to flow across the frame. The type of content has ranged from the crude to the incredibly insightful and inventive, and some users have even subtitled music videos with the song’s lyrics. The videos themselves are a geek’s paradise, consisting mainly of anime, video-game footage and videos of young ladies. The unique format and addictive nature of the Web site has millions tuned in, giving it one of the most dramatic growth surges ever as it went from a January launch to become the seventh-most visited Web site in Japan as of December, according to global site-ranking service Alexa.com.
Mobile gaming gets the big company treatment
Disney Wonder Days
Following in the footsteps of the innovative 2006 avatar-based mobile-gaming platform MobaGe-Town, this April Disney threw in its hat with a big press push and its own avatar-based game and social-interaction platform. Disney Wonder Days capitalized on the brand popularity and makes its money from monthly subscriptions. The range of games is pretty slick and offers Disney fans a healthy selection of characters. What it represented mostly was media giant Disney jumping into the mobile social media space to capture the hugely lucrative children’s market. You know the scene is changing when the big names get involved. (more…)
Written on January 11, 2008 – 12:03 am
Ernst-Jan Pfauth, editor in chief
Tripr is a recently launched travel site where people can post video reviews of the hotels they’ve visited. The goal of the Dutch founders is to create an archive of reviews, so that visitors on the basis of the videos can determine whether they want to stay in a hotel or not.
When a visitor decides to book a hotel based on a review, the makers of the video earn 33 percent of the commission.
Jan Kooman, founder of Tripr.TV: “We’re some sort of YouTube for the travel industry. Because the videos are shot by hotel guests, visitors can get a good impression before booking. Moving images are more realistic than those often outdated pictures”.
In the press release (Dutch), the founders claim that the visitor gets an independent impression of the hotel. I dare to differ.
If I were to shoot a video for money, I would show the most beautiful parts of the hotel and, for instance, not zoom in on the dirty parts of the bath room. And really, I’m a nice guy. It’s just that I would feel like I was shooting a commercial, instead of a review. Why would I tell about my negative experiences if I could earn more money by drawing a nice picture?
When asking Kooman for a reaction on this remark, he said: “The good thing about video is that it is particularly hard to disguise the truth. On traditional websites with the well-known pictures, faking beauty is way easier. You just take a good picture from the right perspective and you’re done. When you’re filming, you’re actually walking through the hotel. Moreover, we’ll also publish video reviews made by an independent Tripr adviser”.
The customers and ‘independent’ adviser have the same goal though, and that’s making money. I agree with Koopman that it’s harder to disguise the truth when using video, instead of stamp-sized outdated pictures. Those photographers can turn crappy rooms into royal suites. Yet I don’t think that the label ‘review’ is the right one, since it’s more like a user generated commercial.
This doesn’t mean I don’t like the idea. I’m pretty sure that next time I want to book a night in a hotel, I can’t resist the temptation of checking what the room is like through the eyes of others.
Update: Tripr is now also available in English
Written on January 9, 2008 – 9:00 am
Guest blogger, sharing views on The Next Web
Michael Volpi must either have a great plan for innovation this year, or he must be feeling like the walls are closing in.
Joost started the race for Internet TV way before everyone else with a product unlike any other, with the promise of unprecedented flexibility on targeted ads so the advertisers would get the best bang for their buck.
However it seems like way too many people have jumped on the Internet TV space, with many different and innovative approaches.
During the last weeks, I’ve started noticing how some big players are merging with Hulu.com’s embeddable content and how some of them are trying to get into your living room.
Last year I told David Clark, North American VP of Joost at the NY Video Meetup that many people have said that Joost should create a Set-Top Box device, or to partner up with a TV manufacturer and get Joost on the TV, but probably one of the things they’ve not thought about is to port Joost into an Xbox Live downloadable application and make a deal with Microsoft. Of course this was in front of hundreds of people and he just gave me a politically correct answer and went on.
If I could have a chance to talk to Michael Volpi, I’d suggest a couple of crazy ideas, which have been implemented during the past week by no other than Microsoft, Veoh.com, and the Big G. (more…)
Written on January 4, 2008 – 5:15 pm
Ernst-Jan Pfauth, editor in chief
Swiss artist Guillaume Reymond played Tetris with real human-beings in an auditorium. This stop-motion video was played for Les Urbaines Festival in November 2007 in Switzerland.
Moreover, it’s extremely popular on YouTube. Six hours ago, this video was watched 250.000 times, now it counts 716,078 (!). Be number 716,079 and enjoy this digital art viral!
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