video – Page 2 – StartUpArabia

Shofha.com, Arabic Movies & Series Online On Demand

February 13, 2010February 13, 2010 MMM 88 Comments

LINKonLINE, a subsidiary of LINKdotNET (an Orascom Telecom Holding company), has announced the launch of a new entertainment service called Shofha, in collaboration with regional movie and series producers and rights owners.

The new service, which is available in English and Arabic, allows anyone from anywhere in the world, to legally watch the latest Arabic movies and television series online on the same day of their international release. Movies and series are provided in high resolution, commercial free, through online streaming or download; with the video files being all DRM protected, most probably using Microsoft Windows Media DRM.

Shofha.com comes with a good back catalogue of movies and series, either on rental or purchase basis, that can be downloaded or watched online. TV series will be available in both full series form as well as sing episode form; even 5 minute episode highlights are provided for those without much time on their hands.

The available options are to: Buy the video, where a user gets to download the video to their pc and play it anytime they wish indefinitely, with the ability to download the movie up to 3 times; Rent the video, where a user can download the video to their pc and watch it as many times as they want within a 48 hour time-frame; and finally there’s the Internet Cinema option where the user gets to instantly start watching the video through online streaming as many times as they wish in a 24 hour time-frame, with the quality of the video depending on the connection speed the user has.

The prices for each option seem to vary depending on the country, for example international users paying in US dollars would have to pay something like: $US 6 to buy, $US 3 to rent, and $US 9 to stream online; on the other hand, someone in the UAE would pay 9 Dirhams to buy, 5 Dhs to rent, and 7 Dhs to stream online, which is much cheaper.

TwitVid Launches Real-Time Video Search, Virtual Gifts & Analytics

December 17, 2009December 17, 2009 MMM 1 Comment

TwitVid, the service that enables people to easily and quickly post their videos for sharing on Twitter, and that was previously reviewed here, just recently announced the launch of a number of new interesting features.

The new set of announced features is as follows:

Real-time video search: Over the past period, with the continuing accelerated pace at which news and content is shared online, a lot of focus has been going to services that can keep up and offer real-time access to that information and the possibility to search through it. TwitVid attempts to crack that for video, by offering the ability to search through video content posted on Twitter through it in real-time.

Virtual gifts: Virtual goods have emerged as a very effective means of monetization for online games and services. Just a look at some of the companies selling virtual goods through their applications and games on Facebook, and the deals that have been happening around them recently, show how hot that space currently is.
TwitVid debuted its gifting service in November, through which they enable users to buy and send gifts to one another.

Analytics reports: In a bid to offer more value to people who tweet many videos, and who would like more insight on how well their videos are doing, TwitVid has launched a new analytics feature that shows the number of views for a video, its top linkers, the evolution of traffic over time, as well as where the traffic is coming from. Traffic can also be displayed by geographic location and internet domain.

TwitVid has found a lot of success as a platform of choice for video uploaders on Twitter, even attracting a number of high profile and celebrity users along the way.

TwitVid is a product of EatLime, a Sunnyvale based company, founded by Mohammad Al Adham from Jordan and Adil Lalani from Pakistan. The company previously secured a round of funding from investors Draper Fisher Jurvetson, Amidzad Partners, and XG Ventures.

Bayarat, An Arabic Online Media Content Search Engine

November 11, 2009November 11, 2009 MMM 5 Comments

Bayarat is a new media search engine that was recently launched in its alpha version catering to the Arab world and aiming to make it easier to search for and find Arabic media content online.

Bayarat is currently only indexing video content from around the web and across online video sharing portals, with plans to add more types of media content in the near future.

A translation layer is integrated into the search engine in order to enable it to search for the same term in Arabic, English, French and Spanish; to broaden the search and return all relevant results.

One of the integrated features to enhance the search experience is an Arabic spell-checker, that suggests corrections for misspelled words that users type into the search box, in order to help them find better results for their searches.

The search engine has already crawled and indexed over 3 Millions videos ever since its launch just about a month ago. The site’s interface is available in both Arabic and English.

Bayarat was created and launched by Monther AbuShaikh, who previously brought us TweetShell, and is also CTO at Ikbis, the popular Arab video and photo sharing service.

Twitvid And TwitterFon To Bring Video Tweeting To iPhone 3GS

June 9, 2009June 9, 2009 MMM

TwitVid.com, the instant video tweeting service previously reviewed here, and TwitterFon, the most popular Twitter application for the iPhone, announced a partnership where the TwitVid video service will be integrated into the TwitterFon iPhone application, enabling its large base of iPhone users to easily Tweet mobile videos to their Twitter followers who can begin watching the videos instantly, even before the upload from the source iPhone is completed.

The partnership comes on the heels of Apple’s announcement at WWDC ’09 yesterday that the new iPhone 3GS will incorporate the possibility to capture and edit videos directly on the phone.

Kazuho Okui, CTO of naan studio, Inc., creator of TwitterFon, said that they chose to work with Twitvid and not other video uploading applications because it offers the best user experience and high-quality video, along with its unique ability to offer instant playback of Tweeted videos as soon as the video begins uploading, a patent-pending technology created by Eatlime, the company behind Twitvid.

Twitvid has been working on a number of new features ever since their release, among these are the following:
– The possibility to record videos directly from a user’s webcam.
– The conversion of uploaded videos to High Quality video.
– The ability to chat with people when watching a video.
– The Creation of playlists by uploading several videos at the same time.
– The possibility to send videos directly to YouTube after they’re uploaded on Twitvid.

The TwitVid enabled TwitterFon iPhone application will be available at www.twitterfon.com.

Twitvid.com, A Service to Tweet Videos Quickly And Easily

May 24, 2009May 24, 2009 MMM 2 Comments

EatLime, the online video and file sharing service that was previously reviewed here, has gone on and released a new service call Twitvid.com that presents users with an easy way to post their videos to Twitter.

The service doesn’t just post a link to a video when the user tweets, but it uses the patent-pending EatLime technology to upload and stream the video in real time, in a way that a person’s followers on Twitter can start watching the video immediately while it’s still uploading, making it pretty much a live stream.

Users can upload their videos to the service either through the web interface, through their mobile phones (by sending an email or MMS), or through the service’s API.

Just as with other services like twitpic, the user can just login with their Twitter username and password and start uploading and tweeting their videos. Upon logging in, each user also gets an email address that they can use to email their videos directly from their mobile.

The system’s API also helps open it up, making it easy for other companies and developers to integrate the service into their own services and products.

Among future plans is the ability to resume uploading if the connection is lost, enabling users to resume uploading from the exact point where it stopped.

EatLime, the company behind Twitvid.com, is a 5 person San Francisco based company, founded by Mohammad Al Adham from Jordan and Adil Lalani from Pakistan.

Al Jazeera Launches First Creative Commons Video Footage Repository

January 14, 2009January 14, 2009 MMM 1 Comment

Last night, Al Jazeera Network launched the world’s first online repository of broadcast quality video footage released under the ‘Creative Commons 3.0 Attribution’ license. Select Al Jazeera video footage – at this time footage of the War on Gaza – will be available for free to be downloaded, shared, remixed, subtitled and eventually rebroadcasted by users and TV stations across the world with acknowledgement to Al Jazeera.

The repository is available online at http://cc.aljazeera.net, and through it Al Jazeera will release its exclusive Arabic and English coverage produced by the Network’s correspondents and crews in the Gaza Strip, that should make it a key resource for anyone producing content on the current situation especially with the scarcity of news footage available.

This step makes Al Jazeera the first news organization to release its footage under the ‘Creative Commons 3.0 Attribution’ license which allows for commercial and non-commercial use.

Mohamed Nanabhay who headed New Media at Al Jazeera and launched the project stated, “As one of the only international broadcasters in Gaza, our coverage of the war has been unsurpassed. The launch of Al Jazeera’s Creative Commons Repository means that our Gaza footage will be made available under the most permissive Creative Commons license (CC-BY). With the flexibility of the license we expect to introduce our outstanding coverage to an even wider audience across the world. This means that news outlets, filmmakers and bloggers will be able to easily share, remix and reuse our footage.”

Lawrence Lessig, the founder of the Creative Commons organization and Professor of Law at Stanford University, stated, “Al Jazeera is teaching an important lesson about how free speech gets built and supported. By providing a free resource for the world, the network is encouraging wider debate, and a richer understanding”.

Joichi Ito, CEO of Creative Commons and a world renowned Web 2.0 entrepreneur, added, “Video news footage is an essential part of modern journalism. Providing material under a Creative Commons license to allow commercial and amateur use is an enormous contribution to the global dialog around important events. Al Jazeera has set the example and the standard that we hope others will follow”.

Bayt Launches Contest To Crowdsource Explanatory Videos

January 8, 2009January 8, 2009 MMM

After asking people to help them redesign their website in a previous initiative covered here; Bayt, the leading Middle Eastern job site, has now launched a new video contest soliciting help from creative people in creating a visual style for a series of multimedia videos that can clearly explain what Bayt.com does and how their users can get the most out of the website.

Dan Stuart, Head of Strategic Initiatives at Bayt, created two scripts for the videos, and launched a microsite where he asks people to submit one video that shows their use of an original visual concept to one of his scripts.

The winning video concept will receive the contract to create more than three trilingual videos for Bayt.com. Also, both the winning designer and design will be promoted on Bayt.com, in all contest-related PR, and promoted on the contest Microsite.

The deadline for submissions is March 6th, 2009.

For more information, to submit videos and for the legal details, you can check the contest microsite that can be found here: icandraw.bayt.com

3alaRasi, A Portal For Comedy Entertainment Content

November 23, 2008November 23, 2008 MMM 3 Comments

3alaRasi is a Jordanian entertainment portal that features a mix of funny cartoons, caricatures, articles, videos, photos and audio.

The portal’s content comes both from in-house productions, as well as content generated and submitted by the site’s users.

The site integrates all the regular sharing and social networking features that allow users to create their profiles, connect with their friends, and share all supported kinds of content with them.

In addition to all the kinds of content mentioned above, users can also upload and share games in Flash and Shockwave format.

The cartoons and animations currently produced by the 3alaRasi team are currently inspired by the Jordanian (Awad Abu Shifa, Jaber Kawanes, 7awa) and Palestinian (Falla7) society and culture, but there are plans to expand and add Egyptian and Gulf inspired characters and content soon.

The site’s interface is currently in English only, although an Arabic version should be expected soon.

3alaRasi also distribute their content through a number of mobile channels in Jordan and the GCC, and are looking to expand to other countries in the region.

Other distribution channels have been through Jordanian radio station Mazaj FM airing Audio clips from 3alaRasi, as well as Nourmina TV which aired 3alaRasi cartoon episodes in Ramadan. A new deal with Jordanian daily Addustour, will also see a daily cartoon from 3alaRasi cartoonist Omar Abdallat published in the newspaper.

3alaRasi was launched by ERUM Creative Productions L.L.C, which was founded by Amer M. AbuLaila, Omar Abdallat, Rajai Qawas, and Fahd Oweidat.

# 3alaRasi