TiVo users can now send video and picture montages to other TiVo users for free through the end of April. The company hooked up with the Web site One True Media (jeez, where’s Orwell?), which will facilitate all of this nonsense. Users upload their pics and videos to One True Media, make a “Tivo channel code,” then share the channel with their TiVo-owning friends. Wow, that sounds pretty intuitive. I’ve always wanted to go to a third-party Web site, upload my stuff to their servers, then go back to my TiVo to enjoy my friends’ totally awesome montages. This service is in beta from now until April 30, when the price jumps to $3.99 per month or $39.99 per year. So if you’re one of the few clinging onto your broadband-connected TiVo and have an itch to share (in a roundabout way) your cool home movies and whatnot, bow down before the One True Media. Now Playing … Your Video Montages on TiVo! [One True Media via Gizmodo] → Read More
One True Media will announce today $5 million in new funding from Kleiner Perkins Caufield and Byers. The service provides online video and photo slide show editing and sharing. One True Media’s service is highly usable, is well positioned to target families and online social network users but leans towards lock-in in its approach to the tension between the viral nature of online multimedia and it’s business interests. This tension is caused by the company’s business model, which aims to monetize data storage and the creation of hard-copy artifacts like DVDs and photo books. Given the company’s target demographics, difficulty exporting files to other systems or sharing without the creation of a simple account may not be a serious threat to the growth of the service. This is exactly the kind of high-quality system that could make web based multimedia editing and sharing a mainstream activity. It may not make the “data wants to be free” crowd happy, but it could show that Web 2.0 is for more than just geeks. → Read More
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