It's no surprise that Animoto's new video product is a hit. Upload a few short videos and images, add a song, click a button and bam, you've got a very high quality souvenir of your recent holiday or other event. Here's one I put together for Foo Camp in August. More examples are here.So far it's a one-size-fits-all product. And since it's such a good one no one is complaining. But there have been requests for holiday themed platforms, says CEO Brad Jefferson. And so on December 1 they'll release themed templates for various holidays. The new product will be called Animoto Originals, and the video below is an example. Look for holiday and life event themed templates (Christmas, weddings, etc.). Short videos are free. Full length videos (the length of a song) are $3 each, or you can buy a yearly subscription. My parents loved one holiday video I made so much that I had a DVD of it sent to them for $20 - which is another revenue source for the company.Sample video is below.
With close to 100,000 iPhone applications now available on the App Store, finding the ones the ones that you will actually enjoy and use can be difficult. There are other apps and sites that offer a resource for you to find and share popular apps, and even present customized recommendations, such as AppsFire, 16 Apps or Sidebar, which we recently wrote about here. But what about tapping into your social graph to help find the apps that are popular amongst your friends? Enter Chorus— a free iPhone app that helps you discover apps with the people you trust most – your friends.Chorus, which is developed by envIO Networks, is sort of like a mobile social network based around the apps that your friends have downloaded. The app features real-time feeds from your designated friends (those who have also downloaded Chorus and whom you have friended) displaying the apps they are downloading, and what they are saying about them in the app.
Sharpcast's SugarSync, an application that synchronizes data across desktop computers, laptops, mobile phones, and even televisions, is rolling out a service designed specifically for businesses. As people split up their digital lives across devices and the Web, allows you to back-up any kind of digital file, including videos, spreadsheets, photos and documents, in the cloud and access it from virtually anywhere via a variety of devices. You can read our past reviews of SugarSync here and here. SugarSync for Business, which is specifically designed for small businesses, lets enterprise users sync data across computers and smartphones syncing capabilities, share folders and collaborate with employees within its platform. The version allows administrators to create account for many users, where employees share the storage amount, but each employee has a separate user account (the employee’s data is not shared with other employees). Admins can set storage limits for each user and also receives alerts when user is near limit. And it's easy to delete a user account without losing the data that's in the account.
GSI Commerce, a company that powers e-commerce platforms for major brands, recently made headline with the acquisition of Retail Convergence, which operates RueLaLa.com, a private sale site and SmartBargains.com, an off-price e-commerce marketplace, in a deal valued as high as $350 million. GSI is now rebranding its digital marketing agency that caters to fashion and retail brands, formerly known as gsi interactive, to TrueAction.TrueAction’s new brand identity is focused on helping retail brands turn the transaction experience into a revenue builder for e-commerce platforms. TrueAction is launching Usability Lab, a marketing tool that utilizes a live focus group where real consumers can provide detailed feedback on aspects including digital marketing, design, and functionality. The agency is also focusing on creating technologies for brands to help deepen relationships with consumers. This includes mobile apps, store locators, catalog services, and customer service integration.
A large number of customers of Rackspace Cloud, including Techcrunch, have been experiencing downtime for the past 1h 20m or so. The status blog reports that the service was degraded, and other reports state that it is due to a power outage at the Dallas network operations center. Customers of both Rackspace Cloud and Slicehost are affected, putting services such as Posterous, Dailybooth and others out of commission.
It's been about two months since Opera introduced the non-beta version of its Opera 10 desktop browser, and today the Norwegian software developer is following up on that release with that of the latest beta build of Opera Mobile, a custom browser specifically built to give Symbian and Windows Mobile equipped handset users a (much) more pleasant Web browsing experience. The company's latest 'State of the Mobile Web' report, which was based on usage data from their other mobile browser product, the popular Opera Mini, suggests that mobile web usage is still increasing at a rapid pace.
Zynga changed their lead gen scam policy this morning (the whole Scamville background is here, see updates at bottom as well). And now RockYou is taking steps to clean up their act to, according to an email we've been forwarded.In an email to RockYou's publishers, they say that they will begin complying with Facebook's rules on offer scams (and like you, we're not sure why they haven't been complying all along, but lax enforcement is likely the cause).Two interesting nuggets from the email though. First, RockYou says that from now on you'll only see "clean, safe surveys from top tier brands advertisers." All of the surveys we've seen are mobile subscription scams, so I'm not sure there's such a thing as a clean, safe survey. Second, the email says "the Facebook compliance team will be keeping a very close eye on offer walls starting tonight." We'd heard that Facebook is coming down hard on app developers around scams right now, but Facebook won't comment about it other than to say that they have always been monitoring application offers and enforcing the rules. From what we've seen, that enforcement didn't bring much in the way of results, but perhaps they're more serious about the situation now.The full email:
Break Media, a social video site for guys, is launching a new branded content project, called the “Social Sportz Net," created in partnership with liquor brand Southern Comfort. The videos will consist of an original series of webisodes designed around the "uniqueness and versatility" of the popular spirit. The “Social Sportz Net” channel will cover information that most fratastic guys want: how to throw a perfect party. For example, a webisode will feature everything guys need to know to host a killer house party, including the right music, required dress, games and entertainment, and drinks ideas.
If you've been on Twitter for a while, there's a good chance you've come across a tweet that asked you to retweet something (usually a link to a spammy-looking site) for the chance to enter a contest. Of course, these are typically bogus, leading many people to simply ignore them. And that poses a problem to the companies who really are trying to run sweepstakes on Twitter, who can have a hard time proving their legitimacy. Wildfire, a platform for building viral marketing campaigns, is looking to help: the company has just launched support for sweepstakes on Twitter, allowing brands to now manage campaigns across their websites, Facebook, and Twitter simultaneously.Wildfire hasn't been around very long, but it's already accomplished quite a bit: it won last year's fbFund, and has built up a very impressive roster of clients, including Pepsi, Sony, CNN, Universal, AT&T, VIctoria's Secret and even Facebook itself, which has used the service for multiple campaigns. But until now, it hasn't been available for Twitter.
A couple weeks ago, a friend of mine came to me with a problem. The British distribution company handling his music video was shockingly backwards in its formatting, and was asking for a Real Media encode of the video. They didn't specify bitrate, resolution, where it would be shown, or anything like that. Quicktime was being a bother, and we needed to use my PC to do a few encodes at this or that specification. We ended up running it through in Vegas, and going to grab a coffee while it churned out the frames.Now, the point is not that you need a PC to encode heinous old formats, but rather that digital distribution is a weird, complex process that could use a bit of simplification. Sorenson's Squeeze 6 appears to go to some lengths to make this happen. It's far from the only encoding platform out there, but I think they're moving the right direction with this version, which not only integrates tightly with your Mac, but also with SMS, Twitter, and other popular services. After all, there's no guarantee that you're going to be working in the same office, or even the same country, as people who need to be informed every step of the way. (link fixed)
Last week Google launched the Music Onebox — a special new search result that lets users stream songs in their entirety for free. The feature is being powered through partnerships with MySpace and Lala, who are providing the song streams, with contributions from a host of other partners like Pandora and imeem. Millions of people will doubtless stumble across the new feature on their own as they run searches for their favorite bands, but Google also has a few tricks up its sleeve to get the word out. We're hearing that a number of well known artists will soon be actively promoting the service, offering exclusive content to fans who Google them. We've heard that artists will be offering songs that can only be found through Google search, some of which will be given away for free. Over 20 artists are involved. Beyond that details are still scant, but we hear that the new promotion will start running soon — perhaps later this week.
Skype's Linux version will soon become open source software - and maybe run on every smartphone, TV set-top box or other gadget powered by the free operating system. It could also become part of multi-protocol messengers like Pidgin or eBuddy or Meebo. Or at least that was the hope for some hours today after a French user got the following answer from Skype customer support.
Since it was turned on for all users late last week, everyone is talking about Twitter's new Lists feature. Most people seem to like it, but some have no idea what it's good for. Perhaps those people will understand a bit more about Lists potential with a new widget that Twitter has launched today.The List Widget is exactly what you'd expect: A widget that you can place on your blog that displays a list of your choosing. One nice thing is that this can be a list you made or one any user has made (that is public). If you simply type if a user's name, it will show their lists in a drop down menu. You then give the list a title, a caption, customize its look and feel, and you're good to go.
Yahoo is claiming it has "displaced" Google search in Germany. Let's just check that again. What has happened is that Yahoo has entered into an exclusive, multi-year, partnership with O2 Germany to become the preferred partner for mobile search and services. Who was the previous partner? Google. So that's not actually the same thing at all.
