Digital Interactif

All U C - The new 'TV-Links'

It's been a few months since UK authorities shut down the website TV-Links.co.uk for hosting pirated content via embedded video players from websites such as Chinese Todou.  I, along with many others, was a big fan of TV-Links and I have never found a suitable replacement.  I tried finding content myself on Todou a couple times but it proved problematic. The trouble with Todou, as you'll quickly notice, is that it's in Chinese and very difficult to navigate. 

That's where alluc.org steps in! (Thanks for the tip Tom)

'All U C' is a German website hosted just north of Hamburg.  Though not as pretty as TV-Links, 'All U C' provides interesting functionality such as voting on which versions of a movie are the best quality.  You can also comment on the specific versions, which users appear to be doing quite often. 

Essentially, 'All U C' trolls Chinese websites, such as Todou, and directs users off of the 'All U C' site and onto the Todou site to watch the videos.  I am not 100% on the legal issues that brought down TV-Links, but I suspect that 'All U C' may be playing by the rules since it directs the users completely off of it's site.  Also, 'All U C' provides the following disclaimer before you watch the video:

Disclaimer

The author is not responsible for any contents linked or referred to from his pages - If any damage occurs by the use of information presented there, only the author of the respective pages might be liable, not the one who has linked to these pages.
Allfg.org and Alluc.org doesn't host any content

All Allfg.org/Alluc.org does is linking to content that was uploaded to popular Online Video hosting sites like dailymmotion.com/Youtube. All youtube/dailymotion users signed a contract with the sites when they set up their accounts wich forces them not to upload illegal content. By clicking on any Links to videos while surfing on Allfg.org you leave Allfg.org, Allfg.org cant take the responsibility for any content hosted on other sites.

If in the past couple of months you've found other suitable alternatives to TV-Links, drop a line in the comments section below.

French Youths Online - Forrester Study

I came across an interesting Forrester report on the French blog, Sortez du Cadre!. 

Forrester polled 1000 French youths, aged 12-24, and found that:

• 89% send email
• 72% read blogs
• 69% use search engines
• 57% utilize major web portals (ie. Yahoo!, MSN...)
• 55% research products online
• 51% comment of blogs
• 43% use chat rooms
• 40% use reference sites (ie. wikipedia)
• 37% look for news online
• 37% Maintain an online blog
• 29% look for sports results
• 29% download freeware
• 27% take part in discussions in forums and chats
• 26% prepare itineraries online (ie. directions, maps...)
• 24% use comparison sites (ie. Kelkoo)
• 24% use social networks
• 22% research/apply to jobs online
• 22% look at consumer reviews online (ie. Amazon, Ciao, DooYoo)

 

In VoIP We Trust

Today Avaya's stock price went hog-wild, at one point dropping nearly 11% before regaining some of it's strength and ending only 1.73% down.   Currently in the midst of a private equity buyout, Avaya is worrying investors because of continued turmoil in the credit market and the recent collapse of stereo-maker Harman International's own buyout deal.  Fortunately, the Avaya's underlying business is solid as a rock. 

As the economy moves forward over the next couple of quarters, skeptics and investors aplenty will cry wolf, but companies that provide VoIP equipment/software for businesses will remain on solid footing.  VoIP is spreading throughout the business world and this will benefit makers of VoIP equipment and software, especially one's with respected names in the industry. The underlying logic is that even if our economy does enter into a recession,  VoIP communications provides a means to simultanously reduce costs and enhance productivity.  Therefore, the equipment makers for VoIP products stand to make considerable profits as businesses inevitably invest in this cost saving technology. 

Two companies to keep an eye on are Level 3 and Shoretel.  These stocks are a win-win situation in the long-run for two reasons.  Firstly, as described above, high rates of adoption and considerable profit margins will allow these companies to grow over time.  Secondly, this sector of the telecommunications industry will see much consolidation in the next few years in order to take advantage of VoIP's global spread. 

Also, keep an eye on the equipment giants Nortel Networks and Alcatel-Lucent.   Nortel is currently priced at a four-year low and it may still have a few bad quarters ahead of it, thus it's price may still go lower.  Likewise, Alcatel-Lucent is nearing a four year low and is currently having difficulty realizing gains from it's recent merger.  But for all their problems, Nortel and Alcatel-Lucent should not be trivialized.  Their international presence and market size could see them reemerge as an increasingly important players in the next two year. 

FYI: I do hold small stake in AVAYA.  I don't (at least not yet) hold any stock in Level 3, Shoretel, Alcatel-Lucent or Nortel.   

I'm no General but...

I came across news today that Google had added 54 new countries to Google Maps.  Here's the list of countries added(emphasis added):

Afghanistan, Aruba, Bahamas, Bahrain, Bangladesh, Belize, Bermuda, Brunei Darussalam, Bhutan, Bolivia, Cambodia, Chile, Columbia, Costa Rica, Cuba, Ecuador, El Salvador, Fiji, Guatemala, Haiti, Honduras, Indonesia, Iraq, Iran, Jordan, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Kuwait, Laos, Lebanon, Mexico, Myanmar (Burma), Mongolia, Nepal, Nicaragua, Oman, Pakistan, Panama, Paraguay, Peru, Philippines, Papua New Guinea, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, Sri Lanka, Syria, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan, Timor-Leste, Uruguay, Uzbekistan, Venezuela, Vietnam, Yemen.

"Afghanistan and Iraq?" I thought.  So I figured if I zoomed into a random Baghdad neighborhood I might catch an explosion or maybe small jihadi's blasting away at each other.  What I didn't expect to see was a detailed view of American military bases from the sky accessible to whoever wants to look. 

Long story short, I typed "american military base Afghanistan" into Google and selected the number one result which stated that "Bagram Airbase is located in the Parvan Province approximately 11 kilometers (7 miles) southeast of the city of Charikar and 47 Kilometers (27 miles) north of Kabul."  I then typed in Charikar, Afghanistan and looked roughly 7 miles to the southeast in Google maps.  Here's a sample of what I found:

Now, as the title of this post states I'm no General, but this CAN'T be a good idea, right?  I mean, for all the privacy issues that Google has trampled on in the past (and present) this is clearly a radically different issue.  As far as I'm concerned, there is no need for "Average Jihadi-Joe" to have access to overhead shots of American/Coalition military bases overseas. 

I imagine this will gain attention at some point on a larger scale, but where is the outrage?  Why is Google giving away our troops positions and unit strengths in the middle of a war?   Come On!

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Norman B. Leventhal Map Center

The other day I read in the Boston Globe that Philanthropist/Map Collector Norman Leventhal had donated $10 million to the Boston Public Library and loaned them 178 of his best maps.  So today I had a few free minutes and took a look at the Boston Public Library Norman B. Leventhal Map Center's website.  I can honestly say that I have officially found the coolest online historical resource ever!  check it out.

Essentially, you can scan thousands of historical maps in the online collection and you can sort them by location, subject, date, publisher, author, and mercator.  The site allows you to zoom in on the maps and the quality is superb.   There are 93 maps of Boston alone and there is even a map of my hometown, Andover, from 1882.   The online is pretty heavy on New England maps so this resource is great if you are from the Boston area. 

It's amazing to step back for a moment and compare this type of resource to Flash Earth and think about how far we as humans have come in recognizing where we are, literally, in the world.  How have our perceptions of self/neighbor/unknown changed as we have been given greater access to maps and knowledge of our surroundings?  The affect that the maps in this collection have likely had on societies and perception is unknown, but I am certain that it is definitely one of the cooler things I've stumbled across online is a long, long, long time. 

Cheers to you, Norman Leventhal.  You rock.

Live Sports Streamed on the Internet

Thanks to my friend Bohgie in Poland, I present to you Myp2p.eu

After downloading an application (I downloaded Sopcast because it works for the majority of the baseball games) you simply click a feed and you are watching a live streaming game.  The quality depends on the stream, but since it is free, it really can't be beat! 

Myp2p.eu will no doubt give rise to rival websites in the future, most likely based outside of North America and as far away as possible from American Corporate lawyers.  This website has been in operation since 2005 but with MLB.com's rapid revenue growth, there will definitely be lawsuits in the next couple of years aimed at Myp2p.eu and similar websites. 

Tous Les Rencontres Sont Possibles

There is a major national campaign taking place in France right now against Aids (or AIDES/SIDA en Francaise).  This campaign came to my attention thanks to the great work of X-Prime, a French interactive marketing agency.  X-Prime produced a flash sitelet entitled Tous Les Rencontres Sont Possibles as a supplement to the public awareness campaign.

The flash animation itself is a bit pornographic (I wouldn't recommend watching this at work!) but it is just emphasizing the importance of using protection during sex.  The website itself is www.touteslesrencontressontpossibles.com which translates into "All Encounters are Possible" as in you should always be careful.  The site's mission is primarily informative, seeking to educate people on how they can/cannot contract aids. 

One sweet feature about the website is that you can see all of the other people that are on the site with you.  The other users appear as floating symbols located above their name.  You can't interact with the other users that are on with you, but I like that.  I can think of about a million other places I'd rather meet someone than a site explaining how you can and can not contract aids.  So good call on leaving that feature out X-Prime!

All in all, the site is really well done. 

Nextedia - The Next Interactive Marketing Acquisition

 

France's Journal du Net is hinting at another big acquisition in the Interactive Marketing sector:

Nextedia is one of the last remaining independent French Interactive Marketing firms waiting to be bought up.  Following Publicis' acquisition of Business Interactif for 137 million euros, speculation is ripe that WPP, Havas, Omnicom and Aegis are all considering acquiring Nextedia in order to bolster their digital portfolios.

Created in 2005 by the merger of Addvise Media and Un77, Nextedia has enjoyed rapid growth within the online marketing industry.  Their revenue has increased from 4 million euros in 2005, 10 million euros in 2006, and is on track to reach 17 or 18 million euros by the end of this year.  Consisting of 270 employees, Nextedia is comprised of 6 different capabilities: search marketing, media planning and online ad buying, marketing analytics, email marketing, and advertising creation.  It is speculated that Nextedia currently has a 90 million euro pricetag ($125 million) a little less than business Interactif, but then again, the big Media Companies are rapidly becoming worse than the New York Yankees (think Roger Clemens) in terms of over paying for rapidly disappearing resources, so I wouldn't be surprised to see Nextedia go for 150 million euros.   

 

Jaxtr and a big thumbs up!

I recently came across the Jaxtr service and I am pretty impressed by its offerings. 

Essentially, friends can call eachother via cellphone or landline through the Jaxtr service.  The service currently works in 43 countries:

Australia, Austria, Belgium, Brazil, Bulgaria, Canada, Chile, China, Cyprus, Czech Republic, Denmark, Finland, France, Germany, Guam, Guatemala, Hong Kong, Hungary, India, Ireland, Israel, Italy, Jamaica, Japan, Latvia, Luxembourg, Mexico, Netherlands, New Zealand, Norway, Pakistan, Poland, Portugal, Puerto Rico, Romania, Russia, Slovak Republic, South Africa, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland, United Kingdom, United States and U.S. Virgin Islands

I tried out the service for the first time on Friday and I was amazed at both its ease of use and sound quality.  My friend who lives in Poland signed up for the service and all I had to do was click on his "Call Me" button located on his Jaxtr profile.  (for reference, this mine: http://www.jaxtr.com/digitalinteractif).

About 5 seconds after I clicked on his "Call Me" button, I received a phone call on my cell phone from Jaxtr.  A voice on the other end of the telephone line said "Please hold, connecting your call..." or something to that effect. 

I was on hold for about 10-15 seconds before I was connected to the sound of a phone ringing (it was actually more like "beeping" but that is just because I was calling a polish phone).  After the 3rd ring, my friend answered his Polish cell phone in Warsaw and we were talking...for free. 

Our conversation lasted about 20 minutes and not once were our voices cut out as had happened with the Mobivox service.  The sound quality of the Jaxtr service is truly incredible!  I give the service a big thumbs up and recommend checking it out. 

Currently Jaxtr is marketing itself to social networks because it allows anonymous calling, but Jaxtr needs to market itself better to international communities.  For instance, a big improvement would be to have pages created in the different languages that their service works in, such as French.  There is a large growing community of American's who have lived abroad and know people around the world, and thus this great segment of the population to target.  I have a few friends in France who don't speak English and cannot read it either, so navigating Jaxtr's site is a daunting task for them.  If Jaxtr took the time to create mini-sitelets which would act as simple sign up pages for various languages, this service would transcend some of the potential cultural/language barriers that definitely exist in international communication.   

I have been disappointed by Jaxtr's widget though.  I have had it located on this blog for the past week and not once has it worked correctly.  It is always in the "loading..." window which I find extremely annoying.  If the widget function doesn't work, please don't take it to market! It's just a waste of my time and it looks bad.  But as soon as the widget starts working, you will see my a functional button on the top of the right column that says "Call Me".  If you are a registered Jaxtr user and click on that button, we will be connected seamlessly and for free.  Pretty cool.

UPDATE:

Thanks for the fix Jaxtr!  Unfortunetly the Jaxtr widget isn't easy to get onto Typepad's sidebar, there is no Typepad option within the 'Post It' options but I look forward to the day that your engineers get it up and running.

Also, a friend of mine had added the Jaxtr widget to their facebook profile and it appears that her widget also belongs to Odessa the Engineer. 

But no love lost, I made another call with Jaxtr today and it was just as great as the first time I used it!   

Prank Calling The Brits

I don't know about you, but I plan on prank calling a couple of British folk I know this 4th of July.  Normally I wouldn't do such a thing, but this 4th of July it will be for free and from my cell phone thanks to MOBIVOX.

MOBIVOX offers to anyone who is registered to the service $10 US worth of free international calls from anywhere in the United States this July 4th. Users will be able to make their free calls from the United States to anywhere in the world on mobile or fixed lines anytime from midnight EDT to 11:59:59 pm EDT July 4 for a value up to 10$ US of MOBIVOX credit. At 11:59:59 pm EDT the unused portion of the gift in dollar value will be put back to zero.

MOBIVOX's Independence Day promotion is a way to connect friends and family separated by oceans, continents or simply national frontiers who can't make it to Fourth of July picnics or barbecues, and to thank its growing user base for choosing the MOBIVOX service.

THANK YOU MOBIVOX.  I truly appreciate the gesture and this promotion will be the first of many times that I use your service.  You are terrific...

But, I expect more.  Essentially you dial up a local access number and then from there you are connected to the number you are trying to reach.  Currently, Mobivox allows one to only call landlines in the following countries:

Argentina, Australia, Austria, Belgium, Chile, Cyprus, Czech Republic, Denmark, Estonia, France, Germany, Greece, Hungary, Iceland, Ireland, Israel, Italy, Luxembourg, Malaysia, Mexico (Mexico City, Monterrey, Guadalajara), Netherlands, New Zealand, Norway, Poland, Portugal, Russia (Moscow and St. Petersburg), South Korea, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland, Taiwan, Turkey (Ankara and Istanbul), United Kingdom and Venezuela-Caracas.

While this is a nice selection of countries, all of my friends currently over in Europe only own mobile phones.  I have no one to call on a landline in Europe so I will be forced to call random british people who I will thank for losing the war of independence a few hundred years ago...all from my cell phone with a beer in hand.  So cool.

And just in case you are curious, here are the countries in which you can call Mobile phones  for free through the Mobivox service:

Canada, China, Guam, Hong Kong, Puerto Rico, Singapore, Thailand and United-States (including Alaska and Hawaii).

Seriously, Guam? Ok whatever, it's cool.  But do they even have cell phones in Guam? If you're reading this, you're not from Guam.  I'd say that last one is true.

UPDATE:

Great News!  I was wrong! You can INDEED call cell phones AS WELL AS landlines, no matter where on July 4th for free.  Now just to clear it up, it's not unlimited FREE, but instead you receive a $10 dollar credit.  This is cool but the rates are pretty expensive. 

For instance, I am calling a friend in Poland on July 4th(don't get me wrong, I wouldn't be calling him if it wasn't for Mobivox's promotion, so again, thanks Mobivox, you rock!) but it is $.26 per minute.  This works out to be a 40 minute phone call which is pretty sweet...but its too expensive to make it a habit.