1dawg Converts Online Video For Mobile Devices
The oddly-named 1dawg is the latest of hundreds of
hopefuls to ride the online video wave. 1dawg's differentiating factor is that it
provides a free video conversion service to a variety of mobile devices. It's a seemingly
minor thing to do, but in the current era mobile devices often use incompatible media
formats - and so this really does scratch a decent itch for consumers. As 1dawg's Adam
Fichman explained in an email sent round to media folks:
"Each portable media device, like an iPod or PSP, accepts a very limited number of file extensions, if even more than just one [...] What our company does is provide the means for a video in an incompatible format to be available for whatever media device the user wants to transfer it to."
The devices supported currently include video iPod, Sony Playstation Portable, Creative Zen, Zune, Video Cell Phone and a basic Windows/Mac/Linux compatible file format. A few of those use MPEG-4, so mobile devices are not quite as incompatible as it first appears.
Other than the file conversions, 1dawg is your typical video sharing site - very similar to YouTube. I doubt the file conversions alone will be enough to get the network effects going - it's more a 'feature' than a business, as web 2.0 critics are wont to say. Still, it's a neat value add for the site and one I'd like to see YouTube and others employ.
Note that there are plenty of file conversion services around, but not many are part of an online video service. If you know of other sites that already offer a file conversion feature, tell us in the comments.
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mux.am was recently put out there by the guys from cruxy.com.
It uses amazon web services.
Indeed, this is a feature. it's a feature within cruxy.com and was brought out to see some light as an experiment. Could be utilized as a partial revenue stream for commercial use and/or hosting fees.
An API exists.
Has worked well for me.
Why go through the hassle of uploading your video to convert it? There is enough free software, like "Super" for example, that does the job for an incredible variety of formats right on your machine, faster that is!
I don't think people will upload videos to convert them. They will download other people's videos in all those formats. Either way it's a new twist. I think it can be a good marketing ploy, especially if they sign deals w/ the device manufacturer's and become the content providers in cross promo deals and just explode. Imagine how much easier it would be to sell an ipod if the rep could say "you can go home and download thousands of videos for it at this site free". And they are sending the videos to phones, creating a new marketing strategy for phone carriers trying to sell data plans. Just my 2cents.
Yes, maybe youre right, even though there are already millions of videos for download for free, you would just have to convert them on your computer.
you've gotta take into account all the tech-illiterate people out there--imagine how helpful a service/site like this would be to someone like a grandmother in chicago who wants to see a video of her grandson's soccer game in st louis but doesn't really understand how to user her computer-something like this site dumbs it down for the non-techies and takes them through everything step by step with no software to install on their home computers...also the site offers a private user account option which is unique from what i've seen, that lets you choose who sees your videos--if you want to upload a private family video (wedding, baptism, etc.)only for relatives out of state/country to see, then you can...think about it--sites like this have the potential to actually be useful to people as opposed to being just a minor distraction from the day/form of entertainment(which are good things themselves), in their day to day lives...that's awesome...web 2.0 what what!