SuTree - The Video Instruction Site Gets Improvements, Upgrades & More Content

Posted on Saturday 24 November 2007

SuTree LogoSuTree is an interesting site, launched about 6 months ago, whose aim it is to educate and entertain using the medium of online video. 

The initial offering back then was a simple listing of instructional videos. 

Since that time the site has received good reviews and lots of feedback, both positive and negatively constructive. 

SuTree is still a fairly early development in perhaps the most important Web 2.0 venue - education. 

Aggregating Knowledge

This aspect of the Web has been woefully underdeveloped, and I actually root for any development aimed at tackling the immense task of aggregating knowledge. 

Now SuTree has stepped up their development by growing their service organically through feedback and added features.

According to the site statistics SuTree now has 11322 instructional videos via 259 sources. Their categories cover the gambit from cool brain games and electronics to travel and sports. 

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Phil Butler @ 1:21 pm
Filed under: News and Video on Demand and Video Start-Ups
Cable Companies Need To Open Up Their Walled Garden To Compete In Digital Age

Posted on Friday 23 November 2007

Tivo LogoI was hoping to upgrade to an HDTV this holiday season, and apparently I’m not alone, with HDTV at the top of Americans Christmas wish lists this year. 

As an analogue cable subscriber, before I buy-in, I’ve been considering the freedom that “going digital” should give me compared to the old analog world. 

The primary reason I haven’t “upgraded” to digital cable up to this point comes down to TiVo, it and the freedom that devices like it that connect to an analogue coax cable give me. 

Digital technology is supposed to deliver more, not less freedom, isn’t it? It’s not clear that upgrading to digital cable gives me the freedoms I’m used to.

Diving into the digital cable world looks to be a kludge of coax, daisy-chained set-top boxes (STBs), and IR repeaters. 

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Alex Curtis @ 3:22 pm
Filed under: News and TV Gadgets & Equipment and Broadband Video Companies and TiVo
Screencasting Comes Of Age - Time For Me To Become A Full-Time Screencaster!

Posted on Friday 23 November 2007

Screencasting Comes Of Age - Time For Me To Become A Full-Time Screencaster!Screencasting has come a long long way over the last three years since it’s existence sprang in to existence.

Back then the term screencast didn’t exist at all. In the same month that the medium comes of age, I have made the commitment to professional screencasting as a full-time career.

Udell coined the term (with a little help from his blog community) and basically (re)invented the medium while he was at it. 

It’s surreal to think that on the month that screencasts turn three I have made the final leap to full-time professional screencasting after working with a great bunch of clients this last year. A lot has changed in a short space of time.

So obviously I have a lot to celebrate, and to thank Mr. Udell for.  Beth Kanter - whose awesome screencasting primer and commitment to sharing her findings on screencasting has made a huge difference to me - has put together a birthday screencast to mark the occasion.

As always, it was cool to hear Beth’s reflections on her experiences with this fledgling medium and much of what she talked about in the screencast, and in her accompanying blog post sparked my interest.

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Vuze - A Legal P2P BitTorrent Service Asks FCC For Help After Being Blocked By Various ISPs

Posted on Thursday 22 November 2007

Vuze LogoRight from the off, I think we need to face some facts about P2P services

While certainly capable of acting as intermediaries between remote parties on the Web for legal data transfers, most peer-to-peer providers today do also provide linking services for illicit means.

But some entities that rely on P2P technologies like BitTorrent are entirely valid. Vuze, a service built upon the Azureus platform, is one such example.

Yet Vuze, like others of the legal P2P variety, is being forced to contend with ISP-led bit-blocking measures

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SyncTV Rolls Out Subscription Plan With Unlimited Television Episode Downloads

Posted on Thursday 22 November 2007

SyncTV LogoThe big problem with online video and television programming isn’t now a lack of availability or choice, but more about the pricing of such services.

Internet television offerings have surged over the past year, but the pricing scheme, can turn out quite costly if viewers are paying $2 to $3 per episode of a show, and therefore turn off a lot of potential customers.

Not to mention the fact that, as we have seen with Google, purchased videos may not be yours to keep forever.

Now, aiming to keep its pricing strategy more in line with traditional television, SyncTV is a new TV download service running in private beta.

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Michael Garrett @ 2:00 am
Filed under: News and Video on Demand and Video Start-Ups
The Amazon Kindle | The Success Or Failure Of This Ebook Reader Could Affect IPTV

Posted on Wednesday 21 November 2007

The Amazon Kindle | The Success Or Failure Of This Ebook Reader Could Affect IPTVAlthough the new Amazon Kindle may not, on first glance, have much to do with IPTV, the technologies involved, and the kind of people who get excited about that technology, aren’t too far apart.

What I really like about the new Amazon Kindle is not that it may boost my stock shares in the company (I would certainly welcome that) but that they seem to have put together a winning platform that fits the users and not the other way round.

What is the connection between the Kindle and ITV/IPTV? Read on…

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Gilbert Hammer @ 10:29 am
Filed under: News and Market Growth & Research
Mogulus Launches After Long Private Beta | You Too Can Have Your Own TV Channel

Posted on Tuesday 20 November 2007

Mogulus Launches After Long Private Beta | You Too Can Have Your Own TV ChannelMogulus, a New York based video start up company, has been running in private closed beta for over four months.

It has now finally been unveiled to the world, and mightily impressive it is too.

Mogulus used last week’s NewTeeVee Live conference as the place to launch, and used the platform to broadcast the whole conference as well, just to show off its capabilities.

A Micro TV Studio

We first took a look at Mogulus back in May, where we were amazed by the incredible options at your fingertips. Michael Pick even described it at the time as “a micro-TV studio packed into a web browser”.

In July we also ran an interview between Robin Good and Max Haot, the CEO of Mogulus, where we found out a bit about Haot himself, as well as some insights in to the company set up and aims.

So what has happened to the company and platform since then?

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