Archive of TheNextWeb.org
Written on September 6, 2008 – 2:01 pm
Ernst-Jan Pfauth, editor in chief
THe OLPC laptop, developed for people from third-world countries, isn’t very popular in the blogosphere. Despite it’s noble goal, bloggers hate the facts that the development goes so slow and that its price is still higher than $100. Apart from some funny news - people paying €500 for a graffiti version -, there’s hardly any positive news surrounding the green laptop.
Well, there is now. Paris-based video service Dailymotion has decided to take on another problem of the OLPC. The $100 laptop is unfortunately not compatible with the Adobe Flash player that Dailymotion and other video sharing sites rely on. So the enormous video site has decided to start a project which will make a large amount of videos accessible for people browsing on the OLPC computer.
The project consists of a special group where users can upload videos that are in fact compatible with the toylike-looking laptop. These videos are encoded in free standards, provided by the Xiph.Org Foundation: Ogg (container), Vorbis (audio) and Theora (compression).
Although Flash-compatibility would be the ultimate solution - like they say on ReadWriteWeb: “that’s just how it goes” - I like the fact Dailymotion is actually doing something to turn the OLPC laptop in a success. Because a project with such an ambitious and world-improving goal can use some respect. So that, in a while, (flash-based) videos of people kicking around with the laptop (believe it or not, there’s actually a man who did such a pathetic thing) will become absolutely intolerable and unheard of.
I hope you like that post!
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Written on July 21, 2008 – 12:45 pm
Joop Dorresteijn, Contributing editor
Good news for alternative movie fanatics out there, Raindance Festival has launched raindance.tv earlier this year and reports that they secured about € 600.000 ($1 million) to accelerate their online operations. The website also signed distribution deals with 8 partners to facilitate the movies to the public.
For those in the blue: Raindance is a well known and (16-year) old film festival for movie outsiders, indies and movie rejects. The festival has hosted an impressive list of guests and filmmakers, including: Christopher Nolan (Memento, Batman Begins), Shane Meadows (Dead Man’s Shoes, This Is England), Ken Loach (Kes, Ae Fond Kiss), Marky Ramone (The Ramones), Iggy Pop, Andrea Arnold (Red Road), Quentin Tarantino, and Lou Reed.
10 months after launch, Raindance.tv is filled with indie short and features films. The low-budget film distributor signed with partners to provide the content, including Daily Motion, Vuze and Joost to provide the content. The video platform license and pay filmmakers royalties from any revenues earned, be it through advertising or pay per view. Elliot Grove, founder of the Raindance Film Festival and the British Independent Film Awards, will act as a senior consultant to the company.
Written on June 10, 2008 – 3:42 pm
Ernst-Jan Pfauth, editor in chief
ComScore recently released data from their online video measurement service, indicating that 23.2 million French Internet users viewed 2.1 billion videos online in January 2008. That number of 23.2 million viewers makes up for 79.5 percent of the total French Internet audience.
So almost 80 percent of the French Internet users watched on average 90 videos in one month. The average video had a duration of four minutes. Please let me get this straight, January is a dark and cold month, Christmas is over and spring is far away, but… 90 videos?! Does French television programs suck that bad?
Although Google has the largest share in the French online video market (28.8 percent), French viewers watched a total of 28 million hours of online video on Dailymotion.com, more than any other site. So we’ve got a classic chicken and the egg story here. What came first? Are the French watching billion of videos online because of the successful video site Dailymotion? Or is Paris-based Dailymotion such a success because French people watch billions of videos?
Written on February 26, 2008 – 11:00 am
Ernst-Jan Pfauth, editor in chief
Stage6, the high-quality platform for videos, will be shut down on February 28. Tom (aka Spinner), a Stage6 user and an employee of DivX, Inc., the company behind the service, wrote a message last night explaining why it’s going to the history. Upload functionality has already been turned off, and users will be able to view and download videos until Thursday.
Tom explains they’ve started Stage6 as an experiment, always knowing it might not succeed.
In many ways, the service did succeed, beyond even our own initial expectations. Stage6 became very popular very quickly. We helped gain exposure for some talented filmmakers who brought great videos to the attention of an engaged community. We helped prove that it’s possible to distribute true high definition video on the Internet. And we helped broaden the Internet video experience by offering content that is compatible with DVD players, mobile devices and other products beyond the PC.
So why are they shutting the service down?
Well, the short answer is that the continued operation of Stage6 is a very expensive enterprise that requires an enormous amount of attention and resources that we are not in a position to continue to provide. There are a lot of other details involved, but at the end of the day it’s really as simple as that.
In July of last year the service announced they would be searching for new strategic alternatives, since Stage6 took too much time and effort for DIVX. A spin-off company, simply selling the service or shutting it down basically were the only options. Now it turns out that it has become the latter.
Tom also writes why they had started Stage6:
There was a clear need for a service that would offer a true high-quality video experience online because other video destinations on the Internet simply weren’t providing that to users. A gap existed, and Stage6 arrived to fill it.
They were surprised by the enormous growth, with eventually has become their own downfall. With more and more video services adding HD quality videos support - such as Veoh and Hulu - the gap will probably be filled again. Only ten days ago, TechCrunch reported that ‘Dailymotion Offers Bandwidth-Hogging HD Videos’.
That doesn’t take away the grieve of the Stage6 users though. Tom had to post his announcement twice to cope with the amount of comments (now around 12,000). There’s even a petition, created by Stage6 user mister_pink:
We are getting loads of signatures every second. Its averaging one every 15 seconds. Now, if we get 10000 signatures in the next 24 hours (or 1000 in the next hour), I will print and mail the list to the corporate office of Stage6. Keep up the signing!
It’s sad but true, Stage6 won’t be feeding the hamster anymore…
[WebTipr: Steven Carrol, France]
adobe flash, Adobe Flash Player, dailymotion, OLPC, One Laptop per Child, Theora, Vorbis, Xiph.Org Foundation
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The Next Web Blog is closely associated with The Next Web Conference which is held annually in Amsterdam, The Netherlands. At this event speakers from all over the world come together to talk about, and show of, the future of the Web. (
