SOMEWHAT FRANK

SplashCast Launches Mixed Media Embeddable Video Player

SplashCast, a Portland-based startup, launched today (January 30, 2007) to offer an easy way to create and share videos, photos and audio online with its embeddable player. SplashCast is a Flash-based site and enables users to create a Flash player to play custom videos comprised of photos, uploaded videos, YouTube videos or even RSS feeds from YouTube or Flickr. Since SplashCast is Flash-based it will allow MySpace users and the rest of the web to place video or slide-shows on their sites with ease. Check out this instructional video by Marshall Kirkpatrick, formerly a key contributor to TechCrunch, for more details on how to get started with SplashCast.

Simple to setup and use, a SplashCast feature that I found interesting was the ability to create a video by passing an RSS feed from Flickr or YouTube. I decided to create a video which randomly pulled videos from my YouTube video feeds. Since it just pulled in a feed I was able to create the SplashCast video very quickly. Code was then offered to be snagged and placed on the page below as shown. 

SplashCast is backed by QMind, its parent company, and raised $1.3 million for the use of related software in enterprise e-learning and is now working on another round of funding. To stay up to speed on the latest from SplashCast check out the SplashCast blog.

Bottom-line: SplashCast makes it very easy to create Flash-based video to be embedded into any page.

Mojiti: Add Comments, Captions & Subtitles To Online Videos

The web offers a place for global conversation as anyone can share opinions, thoughts and insight through blogs, online video or comments strings. Annotating the web has been a recent trend as sites like Fleck launched to allow users the ability to add notes to web sites. Wouldn't it be interesting to be able to annotate video on the web in the same way? Mojiti, a privately held US-based company operating out of China, makes it easy for users to add annotations to videos from a number of video sites on the web.

Mojiti works by allowing users to select a video and personalize it with annotations called Spots. There are currently seven different Spot types which include: Text Spots, Subtitle Spots, Speech Bubble Spots, Thought Bubble Spots, Circle Spots, Rectangle Spots, and Image Spots. Certian Spots allow users the ability to add text to the top of the video while others place images into the a video. Users can also create custom Spot Sets which display together in a video. Spots are associated with video time intervals and can be easily navigated through similar to navigating through music tracks in a music player. Once a new video is created Mojiti makes it easy to share by sending a link or embedding it into a web site. Check out embedded video below to see Mojiti in action.

To find out more information about Mojiti check out the Mojiti blog, Mojiti on MySpace or the Mojiti FAQ page.

Bottom-line: Mojiti is an innovative online video product that empowers users to include personalized commentary, opinions and insight in web videos thus further extending the conversations of the web.

Megite & TailRank Rank Top Web Videos

With loads of video to sort through on the web Megite and TailRank both launched new video features today (December 27, 2006) which present a quick view of the most popular videos of the day.

Megite, the news aggregator highlighted recently for its personal aggregator improvements, has added a feature to help point out popular videos with Megite Video. According to a post on the Megite blog Megite Video:

"...crawls hundreds of thousands of blogs for links to video on more than 20 video sharing services such as YouTube, Google Video, MySpace, Daily Motion, Metacafe, Ifilm, Vimeo, Break, Revver, Grouper, Bolt, Yoqoo, 6Rooms, and more."

Megite Video ranks and displays videos based on popularity by taking the following factors into account:

1. The importance of a blog
2. The popularity of a blog
3. The number of blogs that are discussing a video

Megite founder, Matthew Chen, explained over email that he hopes to eventually be able to leverage user metrics such as click through data as a passive input into the Megite Video ranking system. Additionally, Megite is investigating active inputs in the form of voting for popular videos but is aware that spam prevention will have to be part of an effective implementation.

TailRank, a product highlighted previously on Somewhat Frank, rolled out video tracking components via the TailRank Video channel to present popular video contents of the web. Similar to Megite, TailRank 2.1 uses links as a key component to video popularity.

For other perspectives on the Megite and TailRank video products please check out these articles on: TechCrunch and SpashCast.

Bottom-line: Megite and TailRank both offer great products for a quick view of the most popular online videos based primarily on linking. I hope both these products continue to evolve and improve their respective video popularity algorithms.

SofaTube Brings Online Video To Your TV

With the rise of online video and the dropping cost of flat panel televisions it is only a matter of time until everyone is "watching the web" in their living rooms. Personally, I have found myself watching more and more videos on AOL video, Blip.tv, Revver and YouTube via my laptop hooked up to my LCD TV monitor. I think this trend will continue and SofaTube seems to be ahead of the curve.

SofaTube is a product produced by Red Kawa an Ottawa based company dedicated to helping bring rich Internet applications and games to the living room.  SofaTube offers a simple Ajax interface with large fonts and easy controls optimized for the "10 foot experience." SofaTube taps into YouTube and Revver for its video content but in testing SofaTube it appears it does not change the quality or resolution of the actual videos. So while you can navigate, search and play videos more easily using SofaTube the actual videos display as if you were viewing them on YouTube or Revver directly - I would like to see this improved.

Search Engine Journal gives more perspective on SofaTube. Also stay up to speed with the latest happenings on the SofaTube blog.

CozmoTV Launches Personalized Video Site With Recommendations

CozmoTV, a subsidiary of Cozmo Media which has offices in San Francisco and Boston, recently launched an online video site that focuses on providing users with personalized video recommendations. Users can create custom channels for different types of content. Users can also rate individual videos to on a scale of 1 to 5 stars. These active inputs appear to be used to sculpt personalized video recommendations. According to the CozmoTV web site the idea spawned from the idea that:

“We both loved our TiVo®Boxes and thought that a great service would be to provide simplified search through a Website that would talk directly to your TiVo. (Sorry, TiVo, but we felt that your online scheduler kind of sucked.)”

I first learned of CozmoTV at the TechCrunch 8 Meetup in NYC when I talked with CozmoTV co-founder Alex Rowland. Since CozmoTV had not yet launched I was not able to see a product demo but he did compare CozmoTV to Pandora and TiVo.  I now see the validity in those comparisons though I also think CozmoTV's active inputs personalization model mirrors that of StumbleUpon Video which also recently launched. CozmoTV pulls its videos from YouTube but in doing comparison searches it appears to be only a subset of YouTube videos but as the number of online videos increases I could see this product becoming helpful in sorting through and finding new videos.

CozmoTV created incentives to go check it out and start rating video by offering up 80 Nintendo Wii gaming systems as prizes to the first 80 users who have a user confidence rating of 80 or more. I took some time to see how difficult that might be and I have to admit it is not a walk in the park. I watched and rated hours worth of video and was only able to get my rating up to 10.1%. At this rate, I may be better off looking for a Wii elsewhere but, that aside, I enjoyed creating my own channels and viewing the personalized recommendations.

For other perspectives on CozmoTV's recent launch check out: Rev2.org and Zatz Not Funny!. Also stay tuned to CozmoTV updates via the CozmoTV blog and good luck trying to win a Wii!

TECH cocktail 2 Video Unveiled

TECH cocktail 2, an event I co-hosted with Eric Olson on October 12, 2006 in Chicago, helped to bring together the technology business community. If you missed the event but want to know what it was all about be sure to watch the video that was produced by Lambert Smith of Stone Cliff Productions.

Thank you to everyone that participated in TECH cocktail 2. Special thank you to Lambert Smith for creating this TECH cocktail 2 video which captured some of the evenings happenings. Stay tuned for details about TECH cocktail 3!

Google Pays $1.65B For YouTube Audience

Google, finally confirmed the purchase of YouTube for $1.65 billion in stock options after TechCrunch first surfaced the rumor as, "40% likely to be at least partially true." It was a covered by just about everyone and their brother so I am going to keep this article fairly brief.  Some might think YouTube is a ridiculous gamble on video working out online. Others might criticize YouTube for its wealth of copyrighted and pirated content. However, it is very likely Google will address both of these concerns.

As the number of people that realize that they are paying for cable television and only watching one or two channels the trend to cancel their cable should increase.  Since YouTube is currently a popular place for the masses to watch "on demand" and video content online so they are positioned well to absorb these cable cancelers. A number of television networks like CBS are dabbling online by locking up channels online. This will most likely continue and further push the online video movement to a tipping point. To help clean-up the wealth of copyrighted and pirated content Google recently signed content deals to position itself to surface licensed content. However, Google is going to have to be cautious as to how they clean up YouTube, which compares to Napster which was a pirated mess of content before it was shut down and eventually cleaned up.

Bottom-line: The important thing to remember is that YouTube currently has brand recognition and the attention of with mainstream audiences. This has value, $1.65 billion of value in this case - paid for the attention of the YouTube audience.