Vid.ly, Yet Another Video Hosting Service, Launches Today

Encoding.com has been around for the past several years, and they have yet another turnkey video encoding service called quick catchingly, Vid.ly. The product, which has been in beta since February, was announced today and so far has had more than five million video views already.

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The focus on the service is flexibility. They provide customizable output formats with variable bit rates to suit both mobile and desktop users, premium access to world-class content delivery networks, and a number of other features.

Many of their competitor video hosting sites use the Encoding.com site themselves for their needs, so the announcement is somewhat ironic. They fill the gap in between YouTube/Vimeo at the low and nearly free end and Brightcove/Kaltura at the higher end. Vid.ly is designed mostly for smaller video producers that don't want to spend a lot of money but also don't have lots of technical expertise.

The published pricing schedule is very complex and somewhat akin to Amazon's Web Services where the variables include the number of videos posted, their size and the number of views per month.

There is a free version, where you can upload one video at a time and get a shortened URL that you can use to link to it, similar to what YouTube et al. does. With Vid.ly Pro, you will have access to analytics (coming soon), ability to control output renditions, CDN choice (Akamai and CloudFront, with more coming later), their own APIs and player customization. Even with the free account, you have unlimited video source file size, unlike some of the other video hosting providers.

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Vid.ly, Yet Another Video Hosting Service, Launches Today

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Why Google Doesn't Want Your Business On Google+ (Yet) (GOOG)

Google wants businesses to set up shop on Google+, but not yet.

Like on Facebook, businesses and brands will be able to set up "pages" to reach out to customers, but that feature hasn't been rolled out yet. That hasn't stopped some businesses (as in the early days of Facebook) setting up personal profiles in a business's name. And like on Facebook, these risk deletion.

So beware. But in time you'll be able to market on Google+ as you now do on Twitter and Facebook. 

That's the main takeaway from a video by Google+ Ads Lead Christian Oestlien, via Search Engine Land:

Don't Miss: Our Top To Bottom Tour Of Google+ →

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See Also:

• Here's Your Handy Google+ Cheat Sheet
• Google+ Hangouts Will Be Hard For Facebook To Top
• Facebook Employee In Google+: Tell Us What You Like So We Can Copy It

Why Google Doesn't Want Your Business On Google+ (Yet) (GOOG)

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Google Lat Long Blog: Street View: Our biggest update yet

Wednesday, June 29, 2011 at 10:25 AM

Since we launched Street View on Google Maps in the U.S. in 2007 we’ve added 26 more countries and enabled you to explore images across all seven continents. Today we’re excited to share with you the latest expansion of Street View because it’s our biggest update yet.

New imagery is now available for 13 of our established Street View countries: Denmark, Ireland, Italy, Spain, Netherlands, Norway, Sweden, Romania, South Africa, Taiwan, Japan, the United States, and the United Kingdom.

I like wine so I’m particularly interested in seeing the new imagery around Italy’s famous Chianti region and other beautiful areas of Tuscany. Across the mediterranean in Spain, the home of another renowned wine is available with the addition of the Rioja province.

Pechina, Rioja Region, Spain
And as a food lover I’m keen on discovering Denmark’s beautiful chain of Smålands Islands - famous for its fruits that have inspired many Danish chefs and the new Nordic cuisine movement. In neighbouring Sweden there has been a significant increase in coverage across the country with Lake Siljan now included, along with the popular tourist towns of Rättvik, Leksand and Mora.

Leksand, Sweden
The southernmost tip of Africa is also now available with the addition of South Africa’s Cape Agulhas. The cape is where the Indian and Atlantic oceans meet and is notoriously hazardous for sailors.

And across the other side of the world, you can view the Pacific Ocean from Japan’s Hahajima, one of the remote Ogasawara islands.

Haha-Jima, Japan
In addition, this latest batch of street-level imagery includes higher resolution panoramic views of places throughout the San Francisco Bay Area, Los Angeles and San Diego. This is great for both locals and potential visitors of these popular California destinations, who can now see even more realistic views of landmarks like the Golden Gate Bridge, Staples Center, and USS Midway.

Golden Gate Bridge, California
Of course, these are just a few of the many fascinating places in today’s release of new Street View imagery, so we encourage you to look around and virtually experience them for yourself right in Google Maps. Be it for armchair travel from the comfort of your computer, or to figure out where you might want to visit on your next vacation, we’re thrilled to continue our expansion of Street View.


Posted by Kei Kawai, Product Manager, Street View on Google Maps/span>

Google Lat Long Blog: Street View: Our biggest update yet

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Why No One Will Be Using Google Wallet Yet (GOOG)

At first blush, Google has pulled off something pretty impressive with Google Wallet.

It's a secure way to handle payments and offers all in one place, like Foursquare meets Groupon meets MasterCard. 

But right now, there's a problem. There's only one phone that works with Google Wallet and that's the Nexus S.

And while there are thousands of PayPass terminals that take those "tap" payments, they don't do much good if you don't have a phone or card packing a NFC chip.

It all comes down to the hardware. If manufacturers don't make phones with NFC chips, Google Wallet simply won't take off. And that's not even including adoption from non-Google platforms like iPhone, Windows Phone, and BlackBerry. Good luck getting them on board.

That's where the big problem for Google Wallet comes in. It's not that the technology isn't intuitive, it's getting carriers and phone manufacturers to get on board too.

Google touted several big-name partners for Google Wallet at its event in New York today, but those barely scratch the surface. It'll take more than Sprint -- the nation's third largest carrier -- to really move the needle and convince manufacturers to adopt NFC in new phones.

And the other big three carriers already have a totally different mobile payments system called Isis. What are the chances they'd give that up in favor of Google Wallet?

That being said, Google is taking the right approach and rolling Google Wallet out slowly. It's being tested in New York and San Francisco first, then rolling out to other cities after that.

It's going to be an uphill battle for Google to get everyone else to adopt its system.

Don't Miss: Google Introduces Google Wallet

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See Also:

• Google Introduces Google Wallet, Works At Over 300,000 MasterCard PayPass Merchant Locations
• Here's Our Minute-To-Minute Report Of Everything That Happened At Google's Mobile Payments Event
• Suddenly, This Honeycomb Tablet Is Selling Like Crazy

Why No One Will Be Using Google Wallet Yet (GOOG)

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Mark Zuckerberg On The Facebook IPO: "Not Yet"

Mark Zuckerberg at the eG8 Forum in Paris was asked by Publicis Groupe CEO Maurice Lévy whether Facebook was going to IPO soon, and he said "not yet." 

He also made a few other interesting points:

• He thinks the next industry to get huge on Facebook after games is music, and after that movies.

Asked about Facebook's role in the upheaval in the Middle East, he played down Facebook's impact significantly, saying "My own opinion is that it would be incredibly arrogant for any technology company to claim any significant role in this." It was great because it was both 1- a way to reassure Chinese leaders as Facebook tries to get a toehold there; 2- a swipe at Twitter, which likes to gloat about its alleged role in the uprisings.

Sounding almost like Eric Schmidt, he said that Facebook isn't a monopoly, that MySpace was once bigger than them and they beat them and the internet is very competitive. Read: don't regulate us!

He clarified that Facebook has no plans to let children under 13 sign up.

300 million people use Facebook on mobile; the mobile web version of Facebook has way more users than the iOS or Android apps. 

But the best moment by far came after the interview, once Zuck was off the stage. Lévy didn't realize his mic was still on and muttered to himself: "I'm an old fart who doesn't understand the internet."

Don't Miss: You Think You Know How Big The Internet Is, But You Have No Idea →

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See Also:

• To IPO (NOW!!!) Or Not: Facebook's $10 Billion Question
• Mark Zuckerberg's Chinese Itinerary
• 26 Amazing Things You Didn't Know About Facebook

Mark Zuckerberg On The Facebook IPO: "Not Yet"

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