Channel 4 on Demand - first impressions

Tomorrow sees the official launch of Channel 4's UK on demand broadband TV offering, 4oD, which they've been previewing to newsletter subscribers over the past week or so. I received my preview invite last Friday. Four days on and I've finally got around to installing the client following a couple of abortive attempts, first on my Mac (4oD is PC only), then using Firefox (4oD requires Internet Explorer 5.5 or above).

The download and installation of the 4oD programme itself (basically a shell for Flash-heavy IE pages) didn't take long, although the compulsory installation of .NET framework 2.0 did. It then refused to recognise my up-to-date copy of Windows Media Player 10 and I had to download WMP 11 in order to get it working (followed by a mandatory DRM update, natch).

Once up and running, I was pleasantly surprised to discover a relatively clean and simple interface, running in a full-screen (but re-sizable) window. The 'homepage' offers five primary navigation options (TV, Film, Schedule, Recommendations and A to Z) plus one giant wallpaper promo (currently Mr Gordon Ramsey) and four smaller promos which expand and start playing video on rollover in a rather attractive fashion. The schedule strip along the bottom of the homepage, offering a view of last night's prime time, is less successful, falling below the fold at a 1024 x 768 screen res and bumping up against the bottom of the screen on rollover.



So, what of the content offer? Unsurprisingly, quite a bit of the schedule is labelled as "Not currently available for download" although there are an impressive 128 programmes listed in the A-Z. It's perhaps indicative of the on-demand world that the schedule proves to be one of the weaker element of the 4oD proposition. Whilst it's helpful that the schedule is colour coded to let you know at a glance which programmes are and aren't available, it's still feels frustrating to be reminded that you can't watch The Simpsons, The Channel 4 News or Without a Trace, but you can watch Hollyoaks and 8 Out of 10 Cats...



A more fruitful way of browsing for content is via the genres and recommendations. There are currently seven TV genres (Comedy, Docs, Drama, Entertainment, Food & Health, Homes, Music) and three film genres (Comedy, Crime & Thriller, Drama), augmented with a 'Popular' list. The 4oD Recommends section currently includes a selection of Merchant Ivory films and U2 to you - the palindromatically titled U2 season.



In terms of pricing, there appears to be two main prices points: 99p to 'rent' a TV programme and £1.99 to 'rent' a film or 'own' a TV programme (although this isn't an option for many programmes). There's also a smattering of free content, grouped under the heading 'Free for All', which is mostly teaser episodes for longer series.

Once downloaded, you have 1 month to watch a programme and 48 hours to finish it once you've started watching. It is also possible to pre-book content up to 2 weeks in advance. Download times aren't too bad, especially if you're used to BitTorrent. A 24 minute episode of Trigger Happy TV (166.52MB) took 45 mins to download on my 8MB connection. The playback window offers three choices of image size (Regular, Large and Fullscreen). The image quality is pretty good when viewed as Regular or Large but inevitably starts to pixelate in Fullscreen mode (the clips are encoded at 576 x 432 pixels, 1Mbps).



Unsurprisingly for a still wet-behind-the-ears beta there are one or two rough edges which will hopefully be ironed out over the coming weeks. The search engine doesn't seem to be indexing films at the moment and the text sometimes spills out of the playback frame to name two minor quibbles.

Infinitely more frustrating are the things which are a great deal harder to change, such as the across the board Microsoft dependency, determined by the use of the Kontiki P2P client and the Microsoft Plays For Sure DRM package (both also employed by the recently rebranded Sky Anytime). The inability to transfer content to portable devices is also likely to prove annoying for seasoned BitTorrenters.

Not that these issues are unique to Channel 4. The challenge of how to assuage the anxieties of nervous rights holders whilst simultaneously meeting the growing expectations of digital consumers is going to continue to exercise the whole spectrum of digital media providers for some time to come.

Top 20 best music videos ever

As linear music television continues its slow but inexorable decline, the music video has found an unlikely saviour in the form of the free video sharing website. To quote YouTube's About page, what "originally started as a personal video sharing service...has grown into an entertainment destination".

Whilst EMI continues to attempt to hold back the tide, the other three majors are finally starting to get with the programme and all have licensed their catalogues to YouTube in exchange for a slice of the ad revenue and the ability to police the site of copyrighted material.

All of which is just a preamble to me listing the twenty best (IMHO) music videos of all time and, Blogger beta willing, embedding them in this page.

1.) Weapon of Choice - Fatboy Slim

2.) Hurt - Johnny Cash

3.) Thriller - Michael Jackson

4.) Just - Radiohead

5.) Fell In Love With A Girl - White Stripes

6.) Here It Goes Again - OK Go

7.) Frontier Psychiatrist - The Avalanches

8.) Rabbit in Your Headlights - U.N.K.L.E. feat. Thom Yorke

9.) Hey Ya! - Outkast

9.) Knights of Cydonia - Muse

10.) Stan - Eminem

11.) My Baby Just Cares For Me - Nina Simone

12.) Californication - Red Hot Chili Peppers

13.) Criminal - Fiona Apple

14.) Street Spirit - Radiohead

15.) Everybody Hurts - R.E.M.

16.) Virtual Insanity - Jamiroquai

17.) Common People - Pulp

18.) It's Oh So Quiet - Björk

19.) Subterranean Homesick Blues - Bob Dylan

20.) Take On Me - a-ha

Blogger beta & fabric of folly 2.0

So I decided to take the plunge and port this blog over to Blogger beta despite having read one or two cautionary tales. Those of you not reading this via an RSS reader will note that I also took the opportunity to give the site a much needed lick of paint (new logo, wider columns, bigger Flickr photos, yadda yadda yadda...)

So, what of Blogger beta? Is it as troublesome as everyone says? Well, it all depends on who you are and what you're after. If you're a newbie blogger looking to create an attractive and functional blog without getting your fingers covered in HTML goo then it's really not a bad choice. The drag and drop interface works well for basic layout changes and the labels (categories) are a nice addition. If, however, you're a seasoned blogger who's used to tinkering under the hood then it's likely to prove a frustrating experience.

I certainly wouldn't recommend moving an established blog over unless you've got a whole day to kill. In fairness, you are warned that your template may be affected by the move, although it's only once you've done the deed that you realise quite how many bits and pieces you had setup - the sidebar content, the FeedBurner feed and the Flickr login will all need reinstating/updating. Ultimately more annoying is the omission of some pretty basic bits of functionality, like making an image a link, although presumably this is the sort of thing that will be ironed out before it leaves beta.

The biggest boon from my point of view is the dynamic publishing - no more waiting for your whole blog to republish following a minor template tweak. The new spellchecker also impressed me as a simple but brilliant innovation - instead of a popup taking you through the text word by word, it simply highlights all the queried words for you to scan and correct as necessary using on-click dropdowns.

Whilst Blogger beta is undoubtedly an improved offering for blogging newbies and may be worth the pain for some intermediates, it is unlikely to tempt the pros away from Typepad or WordPress.

2007: the year of the widget?

Widgets, gadgets, call them what you will - mini modular applications are starting to look suspiciously like the next big thing, not only on the desktop and the web but also increasingly on mobile devices. The inaugural Widgets Live! conference in San Francisco was a sell out earlier this month and attracted sponsorship from four of the biggest players in online media (Google, Yahoo!, Microsoft and AOL). The W3C has released a draft standards doc. Widgets have even spawned their own 'pedia' (widgipeida) - an intriguing new barometer of online buzz (e.g. Lostpedia, Wookiepedia).

So why now? Konfabulator first launched over three years ago and its been a good eighteen months since Apple released Dashboard as part of Mac OS X Tiger. Below are half a dozen key factors that have contributed to the breakthrough of the widget.

1.) Increased broadband penetration

A large proportion of widgets rely on an always-on broadband connection to drip-feed dynamic content to them. Increased broadband penetration means more people capable of running widgets. Higher spec computers and the development of operating systems which cope better with running multiple applications simultaneously have also helped cultivate a more widget-friendly environment. Like the personalised homepage (see earlier post), the widget has come of age thanks to technology finally catching up with the ambition. What was the Active Desktop (bundled with Windows Desktop Update way back in 1997) if not a widget engine let down by immature technology?

2.) The widespread adoption of AJAX

Thanks to AJAX, web widgets now behave more like desktop applications. They are more responsive, they can be dragged and dropped and they update dynamically, without the need for endless page refreshes.

3.) The arrival of the big boys

Apple's integration of Dashboard into Tiger in April 2005 and Yahoo!'s purchase of Konfabulator a few months later (in July 05) undoubtedly represent a key turning point in the history of the desktop widget, not least because Yahoo! opted to make its newly acquired widget engine available for free. On the web, it was the arrival of Google and Microsoft to the widget party which really got things moving.

4.) The emergence of converged widget engines

A few weeks back Fox Interactive Media unveiled SpringWidgets - the first widget engine to work on both webtop and desktop - and Windows Vista is due to offer native support of Microsoft Gadgets (currently only available via Windows Live) via its sidebar. Converged widget engines will undoubtedly prove to be a shot in the arm for the fledgling widget economy.

5.) The maturing of mobile internet

The next frontier of widget development is the mobile platform which has been opened up by the flood of Java-enabled colour screen handsets and the movement towards tolerable internet access speeds on handheld devices. WidSets in one of the first products to the market in this space and a it's pretty good first stab. Once flat-rate data tariffs become the norm this area looks set to explode.

6.) Small is the new big

A more fundamental reason why widgets are starting to take off is the broader shift towards smaller, more rapidly developed applications and increasing hybridisation by means of mash-ups and APIs. One only need compare the protracted product development cycle of Microsoft Office (gap between releases: 4 years) with the iterative development of Google Docs and Spreadsheets to see where things are headed. Widgets fit perfectly into this new landscape of smaller, simpler, connected apps.

To round off, here's a list of some of the key products in the world of widgets:

Desktop widgets
Apple Dashboard (Mac)
AveDesk (PC)
Brass (PC)
DesktopX (PC)
Google Desktop Gadgets (PC)
Kapsules (PC - currently offline)
Klipfolio (PC)
Samurize (PC)
Yahoo! Widgets (née Konfabulator) (Mac & PC)

Web widgets
Bitty Browser
Google Web Gadgets
Opera Widgets
Snipperoo
WidgetBox

Converged widgets (desktop and web)
Microsoft Gadgets
SpringWidgets

Mobile widgets
bluepulse
mobidgets (currently in private alpha)
WidSets

Second Life media frenzy

The media seems to have gone Second Life crazy over the last week or so. First there was Endemol announcing a virtual version of Big Brother to start on 1st December with 15 Second Life residents competing for a virtual island. Then German newspaper publisher Axel Springer announced the launch of a virtual tabloid, SL News, offering "snippets about showbusiness and human interest tales from the avatar world" and retailing at between 10 and 15 Linden dollars. Finally, Rivers Run Red announced the launch of a virtual TV station, virtuallife.tv, with content from Channel 4 (TV and radio), the Sci-Fi channel and even the great unwashed in the form of music, video and machinima.

It's easy to forget that dear old Auntie was one of the first out of the gate back in May when Radio 1 teamed up with Rivers Run Red to host a virtual version of it's One Big Weekend festival (real-life location: Dundee) on an island it's renting in Second Life. Sony BMG recently followed suit, pairing up with The Electric Sheep Company to host a Ben Folds virtual meet and greet on its 'Media Island'. The Electric Sheep Company also brokered Reuters recent entry into Second Life and facilitated the BBC's first foray in January as part of Newsnight's Geek Week.

And that's just the tip of the iceberg. Wikipedia has a rapidly-growing list of businesses and organisations which have operated in Second Life, which includes another couple of media heavyweights (MTV and Disney). It appears that Second Life is rapidly becoming a key place to extend your media brand. Not that all of these brand extensions are solely for the benefit of the residents of course. At the moment, a presence in Second Life is more of a brand statement than a viable distribution channel (much like the web was 10 years ago), guaranteeing a company a fair few column inches and possibly a bit of cool-by-proxy. This will change of course, as the Second Life population grows (it passed 1 million residents last month) and the possibilities of the medium become more apparent.

The MOO MiniCards have landed

At last my MOO MiniCards have arrived from across the pond and they're just as dinky and cool as I'd hoped they'd be. For just $24.98 (about £13) MOO will print 100 of your flickr photos (all different if you want) onto mini oblong business cards with your contact details (or any other text of your choosing) on the reverse. I opted for 50 different photos - two copies of each - so I can keep a set and give the others away. It's a great example of what's possible with APIs. Right, I'm off to build a House of MiniCards!

Blogcasting

Online text-to-speech apps are helping to blur the lines between blogging and podcasting. One such app is Feed2Podcast which uses text-to-speech conversion to instantly turn any RSS feed into a podcast. No need to register, just paste a compatible feed into the dialog box on the homepage. Admittedly there's only one choice of voice which is the classic Stephen Hawking style speech synthesizer. It also doesn't always cope well with punctuation.

Talkr offers a similar service, although you must register in order to generate a podcast and it got my postings back-to-front so the most recent blog entry appears last in the audio feed. On the plus side, the female voice synthesizer is a fraction easier on the ear and it makes a better fist of trying to interpret images and other metadata associated with the post. It also pronounced Flickr correctly whereas Feed2Podcast has to spell it out.

It's interesting to note that some traditional print brands are already exploiting this strange convergence of technologies. The International Herald Tribune's recently launched AudioNews service uses ReadSpeaker software to convert its articles into MP3s which can then be added to a custom podcast.

You can listen to a podcast of this blog (created using Feed2Podcast) here or subscribe to it using iTunes on either your Mac or PC.

New (to me) music apps

Have stumbled across a clutch of new (to me) music apps over the last week or so, which all interface with iTunes in some way to extend your relationship with your music. Here's a quick round-up:

earFeeder - Neat little web app which scans your music library and creates a personalised RSS feed to alert you to artist news, release info and gig tickets. Unfortunately there's no regionalisation so all of the tempting gigs are in the States. Cool name though.

iLike - music discovery app which analyses your listening (and that of your iLike friends) via an iTunes plugin in order to recommend a mixture of established artists (with links to buy from iTunes Music Store) and new artists (with links to free downloads from iLike's parent service GarageBand.com). Hasn't persauded me to download any MP3 from unsigned bands yet but early days...

djay - Mac only app which automatically pulls in your iTunes music library and invites you to drag two tracks on to virtual decks and mix them in realtime. In addition to 5-band equalizers and tempo/pitch sliders you can set cue points and add audio effects. You can even scratch the virtual vinyl should you want to take it 'old skool'. Once you're happy with your mix you can record it or transmit it in real-time over the Bonjour network to other connected djays. Won't satisfy pro djays but pretty good value for free.

Tangerine - Mac (Tiger) only app which analyses the BPM and beat intensity of the music in your iTunes library (excluding tracks purchased from iTMS due to DRM) to create playlists of a consistent tempo. Great for parties or, as the Potion Factory blog suggests, maintaining pace when using the Nike + iPod Sport Kit.

Nike + iPod Flickr group

Pleased to see that the Nike + iPod Group I set up on Flickr is starting to take off. It's now got 39 members and a few virtual race meetings have been organised (latest race: the ambitiously titled The fastest human alive!). The group map shows members from Ohio, Georgia, South Carolina, Los Angeles, London and Spain - a truly international running club!

It's interesting to note how Flickr is filling in the gaps created by the shortcomings of the official Nike+ site, which offers only very basic community features. This feels indicative of a broader trend on the web, borne of a culture of mash ups and APIs, to harness the functionality of one site or service to address the deficiencies of another. Rather than lobby Nike to improve its community features, users are simply appropriating the functionality they need from elsewhere. Will be interesting to see whether Nike clock this and how they respond. Will they be keen to bring the community activity around Nike+ back onto their own site or will they see a benefit in allowing it to be dispersed on third-party sites?

Share PowerPoint presentations online

Intriguing new Web 2.0 site for sharing presentation slideshows, SlideShare.net, went live this week. Currently in invite-only beta (natch), the site enables you to upload PowerPoint or OpenOffice slideshows of up to 20MB in size and then, in their words, "share with a link, embed in a blog, discover interesting slideshows, tag, comment and have fun". I uploaded an 11MB .ppt of some of my most popular Flickr photos. Apart from mangling my choice of font (Cooper Black), the resulting Flash rendering was pretty tidy. The interface owes a fairly big debt to YouTube, although I guess they figured there's no point in reinventing the wheel. Will be interesting to see what people use it for and how it scales up. Looks pretty promising.

Changes impacting digital media consumption

A colleague recently asked me what I thought the key changes in consumer behaviour in relation to digital media consumption have been over the last few years. I came up with the following six, which conveniently all begin with the letter C...

Connectivity - from mobile phones to laptops and Wi-Fi, the digital consumer has become increasingly connected (more devices, more of the time), which has precipitated more frequent communication/interaction via digital technologies (e.g. e-mail, web, IM, VoIP, SMS).

Choice - the explosion in choice precipitated by the advent of digital has irrevocably altered consumer expectations around choice. The challenge for media companies is to develop services which can successfully compete in an exponentially-growing media marketplace for the attention of an increasingly fickle and fragmented audience.

Control - from iPods to PVRs, consumer expectations about the level of control they can exercise over their media (the when, the where and the how) have changed radically over recent years. Consumers are also exercising greater control over the process of finding media, as the relationship increasingly shifts from push to pull (e.g. web search, PVRs, P2P, podcasting).

Concurrent consumption - the digital generation, especially its youngest members, are becoming increasingly adept at engaging with multiple media sources at the same time (e.g. watching TV whilst surfing the net and Instant Messaging).

Customisation - from mobile wallpapers and ringtones to personalised radio stations and homepages, the digital consumer is increasingly used to being able to tailor their media experiences to cater for their specific tastes and interests.

Creativity - digital technologies (particularly, but not exclusively, the web) are facilitating a mass democratisation of the tools of production which in turn is fuelling an explosion in creativity (e.g. blogs, podcasts, GarageBand, Flickr, MySpace, YouTube).

Would be interested in other peoples thoughts on this...

The song from that weird VW advert

A quick shout out for Commercial Breaks and Beats which bills itself as 'The UK Television Advert Music Database' and passes the Ronseal test by doing exactly what it says on the tin. With 2,329 ads currently in its database and the option to browse by Artist, Song Title, Company or Chronologically its a neat little resource. More importantly, it put me out of my musical misery yesterday by informing me that the song from the new Volkswagen Eos advert (the one with the oversize coffee pot and wind chimes that starts "I woke up dreaming, I was asleep...") is 'The Men in White Coats' by The Dallas Guild. According to their MySpace page (which offers four of their tracks as streams) they're still recording songs for their first album. In the meantime, you can buy an 320Kbps MP3 of 'The Men in White Coats' for a bargainous 79p from TuneTribe. Nice.

An Inconvenient Truth

Strange but true: the scariest film of the year is now on general release and it has a Universal certificate. That's because we live in a world where a catastrophic and irreversible change in the planet's ecosystem is deemed less disturbing than Janet Jackson's nipple. Still, if it means more people will get to see An Inconvenient Truth then it gets my vote. In fact, it makes a lot of sense to show this to your kids (it's their future after all) and then have to answer the commonsense questions they are likely to ask as in response, such as "so why aren't we doing anything about it, daddy?"

For the uninitiated, the film is essentially a celluloid rendering of an Al Gore Keynote presentation (stay with me people) on the consequences of global warming. That such a unlikely premise has spawned such a compelling movie is testament not only to the hitherto well-hidden charisma of Mr Gore but also to the potency of the message itself. The facts really do speak for themselves. The term "must see" is applied way too liberally to movies in my opinion, but in this instance it might just be true - your future really may depend on it...

PopArtPortrait.co.uk launched

A quick but shameless plug for my latest web venture, PopArtPortrait.co.uk, which went live yesterday. The site enables you to upload a portrait photo of your choosing which will then be transformed by our highly skilled in-house artist (ok, me) into a one-of-a-kind pop art portrait, framed (or not, if you prefer) and delivered direct to your door. I guess its aimed mainly at the gift market in a 'what do you get the person who's got everything?' kind of a way (my first order was a wedding present for a couple getting married in China). Please check it out and link to it if you think it's any cop as I don't think the marketing budget's going to stretch to those full-page national press ads after all...

Relaunched Virgin Radio site

The Virgin Radio website has relaunched with a much cleaner Web 2.0 look. Gone is the rather oppressive red, blue and yellow colour scheme in favour of a white-with-pastel-gradient-fills design which is infinitely more inviting. Gone too are the fiddly DHTML drop-down menus and the global nav options have been reduced from seven to a more manageable five. Navigation through the rest of the site is also now much tidier with a contextual left-hand nav for each of the main areas.

The homepage now features a bbc.co.uk-style main promo with an image loop and five associated text links. Alongside is a similarly proportion animated ad (for iPod + iTunes at the time of writing), beneath are three 'latest' lists (music videos, sessions and interviews and playlist additions), no doubt intended to give the impression of a dynamically updated site.

The 'on-air now' section has been given more space to breathe at the top of the page, with a decent sized image of the presenter which shrinks to make space for a banner ad when you navigate away from the homepage.

Lower down the homepage are promos for the latest competitions, Virgin Radio podcasts and the news, sport and entertainment area. There is also a submission form for the user-sourced music news area (currently down) which I posted about last month, while it was still in beta. The main News area is comprised entirely of syndicated feeds - Sky provides the News and Sport headlines whilst The Sun is entrusted with the latest Showbiz goss. It's a whole section of the website which effectively runs itself.

Interestingly, Movies has been promoted to the global navigation, with a focus on celebrity interviews and details of major new releases (although they're looks to be a problem with the data feed as they're currently all blank).

The DJ/Shows area pretty much does what it says on the tin. One nice feature is the dynamically updating schedule, which greys out programmes in the past and highlights the show currently on air.

Unexpectedly, it is the Music area of the site that proves to be something of a let down. The Complete artist A-Z is surely in breach of the Trade Descriptions Act with just one artist listed under 'A' (Aerosmith) and most entries offering only a photo, a one sentence trivia nugget, a link to the artist's official website and a discography provided by Amazon. As a station which sells itself on music, it seems like a missed opportunity to not have a richer offering in this area, perhaps encompassing contributions from users. Some particularly Virgin-friendly artists (e.g. James Blunt, Keane, Paolo Nutini) do have a 'Fan forum' or the option of voting to create one, but it feels slightly tokenistic in view of the current climate of very impressive user-generated content sites.

One redeeming feature in the Music area is the Song search - a simple but rather splendid feature, whereby you can query the now playing database by time and day to find out what that track was that you couldn't identify. The Charts area is also pleasantly diverting if you're of a Nick Hornby persuasion, where you can discover that You're Beautiful by James Blunt really did come tenth in Virgin Radio's Top 500 Songs of All Time.

One unexpected treat was the About Us area, which is linked to from the site footer and features a nice Digital Media section which introduces the team and shows the evolution of the site since it launched in "1996-ish". It also reveals that the whole site was built in-house by just six people, which is pretty bloody impressive.

Inevitably there are still one or two bugs which need ironing out (if you're reading James, the Search box on the homepage isn't working and Dominic Johnson's Football Blog appear to have gone AWOL). Nevertheless, its an attractive site and a quantum leap on from the previous site not only in terms of design and user experience but also in its greater integration with the wider web (the adoption of wikipedia-style icons for linking to external sites is a particularly nice touch). All in all, a very nice job - well done guys!

Top 20 video sharing sites rated

If you consume only mainstream media you'd be forgiven for thinking that there is only one video upload service on the net: the ubiquitous YouTube. Its stratespheric rise has left even the mighty Google in the shade in the burgeoning area of video sharing.

Of course, there are dozens of video upload sites with more springing up every week. Below is a round up of twenty of the best, with a comparison of key features. In order to make the comparison as fair as possible I uploaded the same video clip to each of the sites.

1.) Vimeo
http://www.vimeo.com/



Register to upload: Y
Cost: Free
Upload limit: 30Mb per week
Upload from e-mail/mobile: Y
Upload progress indicator: Y
Download clips: Y
Privacy settings: N
Converts to: Flash
Comments: Y
Ratings: Y
Tagging: Y
Killer feature: integration with Flickr

Appearance: 5/5
Ease of use: 5/5
Features: 5/5
Overall: 5/5

2.) Dailymotion
http://www.dailymotion.com/



Register to upload: Y
Cost: Free
Upload limit: 150Mb per clip
Upload progress indicator: Y
Download clips: N
Privacy settings: Y
Converts to: Flash
Comments: Y
Ratings: Y
Tagging: Y
Killer feature: Categorisation by location

Appearance: 5/5
Ease of use: 5/5
Features: 5/5
Overall: 5/5

3.) grouper
http://www.grouper.com/



Register to upload: Y
Cost: Free
Upload limit: 110Mb per clip
Upload from e-mail/mobile: N
Upload progress indicator: Y
Download clips: Y
Privacy settings: Y
Converts to: Windows Media
Comments: Y
Ratings: Y
Tagging: Y
Killer feature: Download to iPod or PSP

Appearance: 4/5
Ease of use: 5/5
Features: 5/5
Overall: 5/5

4.) vSocial
http://www.vsocial.com/



Register to upload: Y
Cost: Free
Upload limit: 100Mb per clip
Upload from e-mail/mobile: N
Upload progress indicator: Y
Download clips: N
Privacy settings: N
Converts to: Flash
Comments: Y
Ratings: Y
Tagging: Y
Killer feature: Creative Commons license

Appearance: 4/5
Ease of use: 5/5
Features: 5/5
Overall: 5/5

5.) YouTube
http://www.youtube.com/



Register to upload: Y
Cost: Free
Upload limit: 100Mb per clip
Upload from e-mail/mobile: Y
Upload progress indicator: N
Download clips: N
Privacy settings: Y
Converts to: Flash
Comments: Y
Ratings: Y
Tagging: Y
Killer feature: Huge user base

Appearance: 3/5
Ease of use: 4/5
Features: 5/5
Overall: 4/5

6.) motionbox
http://www.motionbox.com/



Register to upload: Y
Cost: Free
Upload limit: 100Mb per clip
Upload from e-mail/mobile: Y
Upload progress indicator: N
Download clips: N
Privacy settings: Y
Converts to: Flash
Comments: N
Ratings: N
Tagging: Y
Killer feature: filmstrip timeline

Appearance: 5/5
Ease of use: 4/5
Features: 4/5
Overall: 4/5

7.) Metacafe
http://www.metacafe.com/



Register to upload: Y
Cost: Free
Upload limit: 100Mb per video
Upload from e-mail/mobile: N
Upload progress indicator: Y
Download clips: N
Privacy settings: Y
Converts to: Flash
Comments: Y
Ratings: Y
Tagging: Y
Killer feature: Video podcast

Appearance: 4/5
Ease of use: 4/5
Features: 5/5
Overall: 4/5

8.) Bolt
http://www.bolt.com/



Register to upload: Y
Cost: Free
Upload limit: 100Mb per clip
Upload from e-mail/mobile: N
Upload progress indicator: Y
Download clips: N
Privacy settings: Y
Converts to: Flash
Comments: Y
Ratings: N
Tagging: Y
Killer feature: Record direct from webcam

Appearance: 4/5
Ease of use: 4/5
Features: 5/5
Overall: 4/5

9.) blip.tv
http://blip.tv/



Register to upload: Y
Cost: Free
Upload limit: None
Upload from e-mail/mobile: Y
Upload progress indicator: Y
Download clips: N
Privacy settings: N
Converts to: Flash
Comments: Y
Ratings: Y
Tagging: Y
Killer feature: Option to play in original upload format

Appearance: 5/5
Ease of use: 4/5
Features: 4/5
Overall: 4/5

10.) Revver
http://www.revver.com/



Register to upload: Y
Cost: Free
Upload limit: 100Mb per clip
Upload progress indicator: Y
Download clips: Y
Privacy settings: Y
Converts to: Quicktime
Comments: N
Ratings: Y
Tagging: Y
Killer feature: Appends revenue-generating ads to the end of your video

Appearance: 4/5
Ease of use: 3/5
Features: 4/5
Overall: 4/5

11.) ClipShack
http://www.clipshack.com/



Register to upload: Y
Cost: Free
Upload limit: 100Mb per clip, 5Gb in total
Upload progress indicator: Y
Download clips: N
Privacy settings: Y
Converts to: Flash
Comments: Y
Ratings: Y
Tagging: Y
Killer feature: Upload from webcam

Appearance: 3/5
Ease of use: 4/5
Features: 4/5
Overall: 4/5

12.) Google Video
http://video.google.com



Register to upload: Y
Cost: Free
Upload limit: 100Mb per clip
Upload from e-mail/mobile: N
Upload progress indicator: N
Download clips: Y
Privacy settings: N
Converts to: Flash
Comments: Y
Ratings: Y
Tagging: N
Killer feature: Video sizing options

Appearance: 3/5
Ease of use: 4/5
Features: 3/5
Overall: 3/5

13.) ZippyVideos
http://www.zippyvideos.com/



Register to upload: N
Cost: Free
Upload limit: 20Mb for free acounts (10Mb for anonymous uploads)
Upload from e-mail/mobile: N
Upload progress indicator: N
Download clips: N
Privacy settings: Y
Converts to: Windows Media
Comments: Y
Ratings: Y
Tagging: Y
Killer feature: Choice of video qualities

Appearance: 3/5
Ease of use: 3/5
Features: 3/5
Overall: 3/5

14.) DropShots
http://www.dropshots.com/



Register to upload: Y
Cost: Free
Upload limit: 2 minute clips for non-paying users
Upload from e-mail/mobile: Y
Upload progress indicator: Y
Download clips: N
Privacy settings: N
Converts to: Flash
Comments: Y
Ratings: N
Tagging: N
Killer feature: Dropbox desktop uploader

Appearance: 3/5
Ease of use: 3/5
Features: 3/5
Overall: 3/5

15.) Sharkle
http://www.sharkle.com/



Register to upload: Y
Cost: Free
Upload limit: 100Mb per clip, 1Gb in total
Upload progress indicator: N
Download clips: N
Privacy settings: Y
Converts to: Flash
Comments: Y
Ratings: Y
Tagging: Y
Killer feature:

Appearance: 3/5
Ease of use: 3/5
Features: 3/5
Overall: 3/5

16.) vidiLife
http://www.vidilife.com/



Register to upload: Y
Cost: Free
Upload limit: None
Upload progress indicator: Y
Download clips: N
Privacy settings: Y
Converts to: Windows Media
Comments: Y
Ratings: Y
Tagging: Y
Killer feature: Playlists

Appearance: 3/5
Ease of use: 3/5
Features: 3/5
Overall: 3/5

17.) SelfcastTV
http://www.selfcasttv.com/

Register to upload: Y
Cost: Free
Upload limit: None
Upload progress indicator: N
Download clips: Y (iPod & PSP)
Privacy settings: N
Converts to: Flash
Comments: Y
Ratings: Y
Tagging: N
Killer feature: Thumbnail video previews

Appearance: 3/5
Ease of use: 2/5
Features: 3/5
Overall: 3/5

18.) Pixparty
http://www.pixparty.com/



Register to upload: Y
Cost: Free
Upload limit: 10Mb per video
Upload progress indicator: Y
Download clips: Y
Privacy settings: Y
Converts to: Windows Media
Comments: Y
Ratings: Y
Tagging: Y
Killer feature: None

Appearance: 2/5
Ease of use: 3/5
Features: 3/5
Overall: 2/5

19.) eVideoShare
http://www.evideoshare.com/



Register to upload: Y
Cost: Free
Upload limit: 100Mb
Upload progress indicator: N
Download clips: N
Privacy settings: Y
Converts to: Flash
Comments: Y
Ratings: Y
Tagging: Y
Killer feature: None

Appearance: 2/5
Ease of use: 2/5
Features: 3/5
Overall: 2/5

20.) VideoWebTown
http://www.videowebtown.com/



Register to upload: Y
Cost: Free
Upload limit: 840Mb per clip, 30Gb in total
Upload progress indicator: N
Download clips: Y (iPod & PSP)
Privacy settings: Y
Converts to: Flash
Comments: N
Ratings: Y
Tagging: N
Killer feature: Download to iPod or PSP

Appearance: 2/5
Ease of use: 2/5
Features: 2/5
Overall: 2/5

Other video sharing sites (not reviewed):

AOL UnCut video - http://uncutvideo.aol.com/
Castpost - http://www.castpost.com/
eyespot - http://www.eyespot.com/
flukiest - http://www.flukiest.com/
Ourmedia - http://www.ourmedia.org/
vMix - http://www.vmix.com/
vobbo - http://www.vobbo.com/

BBC Electric Proms on your iPod

The BBC has announced the first set of Electric Proms gigs to take place in Camdem at the end of October (confirmed artists includes Guillemots and The Who). In addition to the usual website, you can also download a portable version specially tailored for use with iPod Notes. As far as I know this is the first time the BBC has formatted text content specifically for the iPod, which is good news is my book as I often find myself on the move without a net connection, idly twiddling my scroll wheel. One particularly nice feature of iPod Notes, which the Electric Proms guide takes advantage of, is the ability to create a hyperlink to play tracks by any given artist already present on the iPod, thus building a new musical experience around the music you already own. Nice. You can downloaded the zipped guide here.

Virgin Radio dips its toe in Web 2.0

Interesting stuff from Virgin Radio who are beta testing a Web 2.0 approach to music news, whereby 'VIP listeners' can submit links to music news stories elsewhere on the web and then rate them or comment on them in a digg stylee...

20 of my most favourite websites

With over four months to go until the list-making nirvana that is the end of the year I thought I'd satiate my list-making appetite with a quick round up of some my most favourite websites by category. These aren't the cool new kids on the block but the sites which I come back to day after day. You should already have most of them bookmarked. If not, I heartily encourage you to do so. Better still, post them to your del.icio.us profile :-)

Auction: eBay - don't throw away your useless junk, sell it!
Audio: Odeo - thunder unfairly stolen by iTunes podcast directory
Blog: plasticbag.org - never a dull moment with Mr. Coates
Bookmarking: del.icio.us - still the best in its field
Competition: Photo Friday - behold the power of the aggregator!
Email: Yahoo! Mail Beta - drag and drop email. on the web. lovely
Film: IMDb - the premier resource for any self-respecting film buff
Finance: smile - the way banking should be (ethical)
Maps: Google Maps - watch out multimap, there's a new sheriff in map town
Music: Last.fm - a genuine innovation in music discovery
News: BBC News - quite simply in a league of its own
Personalised homepage: netvibes - still my homepage after 3 months
Photography: Flickr - quite possibly the most finely crafted website ever
Reference: Wikipedia - how did we manage without it?
Retail: Amazon - loving that long tail...
Search: Google - still the daddy, still not evil (hopefully)
T-shirts: Threadless - awesome business model, awesome site
Travel: TripAdvisor - never stay in a shit hotel again
Video: Vimeo - smoother than silky the silk worm's silk pyjamas
Web stats: StatCounter - stats can be fun!

(Yes, t-shirts did warrant it's own category...)

Broadband as utility

Back online now after a week without broadband. After a year of reliable service, my PlusNet connection has been down twice over recent months, first time while they upgraded me to an 8Mb connection, second time for no apparent reason (although ADSLguide's Broadband Speed Test suspiciously now reports a 4Mb download speed...)

Still, things could be worse - a number of colleagues were signed up with E7, whose homepage now beseeches customers not to panic before informing them that "As of the 1st July, E7even UK Limited will no longer able to provide your Internet services." One colleague decided to take the opportunity to register for Talk Talk's free broadband offer. Alas, Carphone Warehouse massively underestimated demand and he's been told he's unlikely to be online before September while they work their way through the backlog.

All of which has got me thinking about the extent to which consumers increasingly think of broadband as a utility, like electricity or gas, which will be available 24/7/365 (not unreasonable really when it's billed as 'always on'). Unfortunately the fledgling broadband infrastructure doesn't appear to be able to match consumer expectations in either resilience or customer service.

When my connection when down the first time, I had to dig out an old laptop with a dial-up modem in order to log the fault via PlusNet's online form (heaven help you if you want to phone up and speak to an actual person). It then took a week for them to fix it. Did they offer me a discount on my monthly bill? Hell no.

Like many nascent industries, broadband providers have thus far been predominantly concentrating on price. I suspect that resilience and customer service will become increasingly important factors in consumer choice over which service provider to pick. Here's hoping...