AOL has conducted the beta test on its videos download, according to the AOL web page. This beta test is expected to be expire until 2/2/2007. On the AOL Instruction page, AOL has recommended the users to use Internet Explorer when downloading the videos available on AOL. Temporarily, there are nine (9) movies available for download, as follow:

1. Eight Crazy Nights
2. Can’t Hardly Wait
3. Charlie’s Angels: Full Throttle
4. D.E.B.S.
5. Easy Rider
6. Flatliners
7. Maid in Manhattan
8. Men in Black
9. Muppets Take Manhattan

However, I wonder when it is considered as a beta test, a tester need to enter the credit card number before he/she complete the download process. I believed this move will discourage the users in pursuing the beta test. I think privacy was of a great concern for most of the people out there. Though AOL can claimed itself a “business-only” organization, I strongly believe that they can create some more valuable resources on the web for the purpose of serving the web community.

On the AOL Video main page, they’ve been actively improving the video clips by adding several categories such as comedy, kids, news, sports, just to name a few, in order to cater to the different interest groups. They also offered the additional value-added service by introduce the best videos across the web. In other word, an user can find some other videos of Yahoo! Video, Google Video, YouTube Video, and etc. on AOL Video’s web page. This represent an important service that served as a collaboration strategy for AOL to work with the competitors.

My sense is that the biggest challenge AOL faced was the technological issues. I encountered the difficulty in accessing the videos. A message, i.e. Unexpected error occurred. (timezone) appeared on some of the movies on the main page. I believe that they’re not ready to challenge YouTube, or Google Video yet. I hope that AOL could learned from the negative feedback, if any from the audience on its AOL Video Blog and start improving from that.

I just came across a web 2.0 that allowed a podcaster to podcast an audio over the Internet. This web 2.0 site is called Yodio. It is still in beta version. The concept of using Yodio is simple, you must sign-up first and most important is to provide the cell phone number to Yodio, and Yodio will recognize your phone number and voice too, then you can upload your audio by login to the site and follow the instruction as stated by Yodio, according to this web page. However, there are three types of Yodio services, i.e. yodiocard, yodiocast, and yodiotour that one can choose for. There is some fee an user need to pay when using the yodiocast and yodiotour in recordings. Additionally, there is a limitation on the storage space for one’s audios. Not surprise, the users can also make money out of their audios, this is a popular marketing strategy for a new company to attract more users to upload the original user-generated content. For a couple of years, I observed that most companies that offered the services of uploading photos, texts, videos, were making headlines around the world. This has also created a market for a whole new different segment of uploading services. I wonder Yodio has taken this advantage on this emerging trend and thus, provide an opportunity for the users to upload “audios”.

My sense is that Yodio is quite a sophisticated multi-media application. For user who want to podcast a good audio, he/she will need to upload a good photo and audio clip too and it’s not easy. I heard some of the audio recordings on Yodio that created through the phone and as a result, a significant loss in quality occurred. Although the entry cost to this podcasting is nearly zero because an user can produce a audio clip through the phone, it doesn’t mean that by using Yodio, an user can optimize the advertising effectiveness on the web if the audio clip was in low quality. However, Yodio opens the opportunity for the interested parties to upload songs, speeches, and interviews. With the existing audios number was less than 500 and most of the users were based in the U.S., it seems that Yodio still has more rooms left to grow in the future.

As picture showed in the above, Apple’s iPod shuffles are now available in more hues than white and gray. This $79 player can be in pink, green, and blue colors as well. However, the size of iPod will still remained as 1GB and only store up to 240 songs. This means that Apple had introduced the availability for more colors for its iPod shuffle line, but not release any new features into this Pod. Overall, it followed the product strategy of iPod nano by adding more stylish colors to further attract the potential buyers.

Since Apple launched the advertising campaign “Think Different” in 1998, I always believe Apple can think and do something that could break out of the pack. The motto of “Think Different” drive the motivation of the teams at Apple. Until today, I still strongly believe that iPod portable music player is one of the best digital products of any kind ever invented. I think the first step Apple to do with this tiny thing is adding more colors, They already done this. The next step, I guess Apple might make it even smaller or more capable in terms of more songs can be store, or put a screen on this iPod, hopefully.

No one can argue that understanding and doing is two different things. But it is important to note that Apple is an innovator. On a personal level, I never doubt the sustainability of Apple’s product development strategy. Their strategy is to innovate, if Apple can stick to this strategy and not surprise, they can come out with some of the products that we can’t imagine.

I just came across an interesting article entitled, “The Premier Meta-Search Engine, SearchGuy.com announces launch of the beta version of its refreshing new design with enhanced features” from Yahoo!, it’s about a meta search engine that called SearchGuy.com. With the goal as the “World’s Leading Search Engine of Choice”, SearchGuy has integrated its web search with image, video, news, shopping, tag, photos, and the proposed job and blog search. Though SearchGuy did not gained the brand value as Google or Yahoo! did on the web, I think it is progressing quite well, albeit slow since its first inception in 2001. On its about page, SearchGuy has released the Spanish version of search engine and also released the current stable version of 2.0. In addition, SearchGuy also developed the desktop search, toolbar as well as the Firefox plugin that with the purpose of increased the quality of the user experience for its users.

However, SearchGuy faced many challenges in the beginning of this year. They are currently undergo the transition period as Lenny Ratchitsky, the President and Chief Executive Officer (CEO), is leaving the Company to pursue other business interests, according to this article. As stated in the above, I observed that SearchGuy has follow the footstep of some established players in product development such as the proposed job and blog search, Firefox plugin, desktop search, and etc. I wonder how this meta search engine will achieve the product differentiation when compared to some of its competitors in the market. On the other hand, in terms of meta search, it’s no longer a new thing. According to an article from UC Berkeley, it has questioned about are “smarter” meta-searchers still smarter? I wonder SearchGuy still has some more room left to grow when there are some established meta search engines such as jux2, Dogpile, Clusty, Mamma, and Ithaki in the market. It seems that the main challenge for SearchGuy now is to refine its search strategy in order to meet the specific needs and wants of the users on the web.

I just came across a website that have a domain as follow: myspace.cn. It seems that MySpace is set to launch in China soon. On the web page, it showed the following message, i.e. Still Under Construction (in Mandarin). But somehow I don’t understand why MySpace will create a specific domain for the China market, I first thought MySpace will use its usual practice, a subdomain in international markets i.e. cn.myspace.com. When I checked the whois record of this myspace.cn, I found the following details:

Domain Name: myspace.cn
ROID: 20040123s10001s00948621-cn
Domain Status: clientUpdateProhibited
Domain Status: clientTransferProhibited
Registrant Organization: MySpace
Registrant Name: MySpace MySpace

Administrative Email:
Sponsoring Registrar: Intercosmos Media Group, Inc. d.b.a. DirectNIC.com
Name Server:ns1.myspace.com
Name Server:ns2.myspace.com
Registration Date: 2004-01-23 07:00
Expiration Date: 2008-01-23 07:00

This showed that MySpace’s China domain was registered since year 2004 through the above mentioned Intercosmos Media Group. To note, Intercosmos Media Group is one of the Top 10 internationally accredited domain name registrars, owning and operating DirectNIC.com.

In matter of fact, MySpace did created their webpage in Chinese and trying to recruit the first batch of China users recently. But they made a mistake in the code by translating the user agreement from Chinese to Japanese as showed in the picture below. However, MySpace quickly noticed this and withdrawn the site.

When a new site planned to enter the China market, I will usually notice that there are two groups of people that closely observing what’s going be the next step this company likely to take. One group of people are optimists, these optimists will tend to believe this new site will going to make in China. Another group are pessimists, they likely to believe a local site will again, outperform their competitor. As Google, eBay, Yahoo, all have struggling in achieve the market leadership in China market, I think MySpace has learned what and how important that they want to be a “second-mover” or “third-mover” in the China market. Additionally, not only that they having the difficulty in China market, I think MySpace will also struggling in becoming the No. 1 player in Europe market as well. Indeed, I regret to see that when people all around the world are talking about globalization, the nationalism has also increased over the year. Don’t get me wrong, I’m not right the wrongs when there is a good marketing strategy for a company that planned for the overseas expansion. This is an issue on how a site that going to convince people in the foreign markets that it is indeed, a local site. My advice to the new site when they want to penetrate the foreign markets, please don’t aimed high, when you don’t aimed high, your expectation is low, you’ll sleep well even if you fail, you would not paralyzed by failure. In addition, you’ll be more humble, when you humble enough, more people will likely to accept you.

YouTube plans to share its revenue with the users. YouTube founder Chad Hurley confirmed to the BBC that his team was working on a revenue-sharing mechanism that would “reward creativity”. The system would be rolled out in a couple of months, he said, and use a mixture of adverts, including short clips shown ahead of the actual film, according to this article from BBC.

Since YouTube was bought by Google in November last year for US$1.65 billion, it did not announced any big move that could help its owner, Google to make any money out of its users. However, with this revenue sharing under the supervision of YouTube’s management, it might attract the huge attentions from its existing users, amount to 70 million. This revenue sharing indeed, has been brought up in an article since October last year. This move will further help YouTube to encourage its users to upload, only upload the original contents to the site. I’m not sure how this revenue sharing going to work and this details of plan was also yet to confirmed by YouTube. As this revenue sharing is not new to much of the video creators, YouTube’s competitor, i.e. Revver has already implemented the revenue sharing on the basis of 40-20-40 with the users.

I wonder money is the greatest motivator to the video creators. Some may say, “Show me the money, I’ll improve my videos”. But I still believed most of the video creators in YouTube are uploading the videos for fun, not for the money.

Source: http://www.brandchannel.com/start1.asp?fa_id=352

Once in a while, I would like to talk about some other things than the web 2.0 sites and software companies. This post is about the branding on the web. I just came across an interesting article entitled, “Similar Search Results: Google Wins” published by brandchannel.com. BrandChannel.com is known as a place for the public to exchange and place their votes on the brand rankings for certain companies in different regions.

The result showed that Google has beat Apple to earn the top spot in the global brand rankings. In addition, we also see YouTube and Wikipedia debut in the top five (as showed in the picture above). According to an article from Red Herring, the editor Anthony Zumpano said, “The dramatic debut of these newcomers—YouTube in third and Wikipedia in fourth—is an indication of a larger trend—the growing impact of online brands built on user-generated contents.” However, as the picture showed in the above, each region has its own winner, it is much dependable how the people, or respondents that reside in that particular region perceived the brand awareness or how popular a brand name in their own memory.

My sense is that it is not surprise Google has won the top place in the global rankings, and there is not arguably that no one wouldn’t heard of Google nowadays. I even read and heard before someone said he/she loved Google till death. Indeed, the success of Google can be attributed to how successfully it has transferred its feelings, social approval, reliability, credibility, quality to the users. You can measure the success of Google by simply ask this question to your colleague:

Please name the one thing you will do on the web everyday? Your colleague when asked will probably think of Google.

The depth and width of the Google branding is no doubt in our memory!

DoNews.com of China just ran an interesting story (in Mandarin) that the “nearly perfect” pirated copies of Windows Vista is being sold in China. One can notice that the CD front cover of a pirated copy showed in the picture above was labeled as “Vista简体中文专业版”. Moreover, by installing this crack version, one can use it without the time limit. In other word, an user who use the crack version will not necessarily to complete the process of registration in the time frame of the 30 days as prerequisite by Microsoft.

It seems that Microsoft need to put in more effort as well as taking a much harsher steps in their antipiracy tactics.

Source: http://www.donews.com/Content/200701/cad7354b915e4f72931c30a7737278c2.shtm