What's m3 then?

It's here! at last... I'm happy to say that m3, our rich media content delivery platform is ready and launched - in beta for now.

So what is it? Well we have, for a long time, been fielding requests from all sorts of businesses looking for something slightly different from our core consumer offer. These ranged from corporates looking for quick turnaround and low setup costs for the delivery of rich media campaigns to small businesses seeking an affordable entry level for content delivery to relieve the pressure on their web infrastructure. m3 is the result of that and more specifically of negotiations we have been having with some agencies and hosting providers who are desperate to provide rich media content delivery services to their clients.

The service provides users with the ability to very quickly register and upload assets in any format for delivery over the sort of scalable global content delivery network usually only affordable to large corporates and media owners. It has a very low entry level at £50pm and no setup costs at all. It currently supports progressive download for Flash, Quicktime, h.264 or any other video format, http content delivery for html, pdf, mp3, ppt or any other file format you wish to distribute, and Windows Media streaming. Next week we will be adding full blown Flash streaming as well.

More to follow

Technorati Tags: mydeo,m3,video,cdn,content delivery,streaming,hosting,rich media,flash video,video hosting,agency,agencies

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m3 on techcrunch

So a few long nights later and we have a release, a beta, but a release. m3 is our new content delivery platform for enterprises and agencies to manage their rich media assets. And no sooner is it out than its on techcrunch (well UK anyway).

Hears a wordle of it if you cant be bothered... :)

Technorati Tags: mydeo,m3,techcrunch,video hosting,streaming,content delivery,rich media

Ola San francisco

Well we're here. After 11 hours on a United plane with a token for either 'a free alcoholic beverage' or 'a set of earphones' we arrived slightly jaded but intent on seeing some more of San Francisco. A jaunt with some of the more charming entrepreneurs around the piers and union square,  punctuated with some chowder in sourdough, meant for a reassuringly touristy start. It was however followed by the techcrunch cocktails which brought us back to the purpose of the visit - to network, network, network! We seem to have successfully irritated the locals already, with some chavvy stranger pointing out that we thought we were cool, but that our jackets were 'contrived' - granted there was a bit of the entrepreneurs uniform going on but I guess i am going to have to think less about clothing from this point on!

Lots of familiar and friendly faces, good to see Scott and Rob, and get a little closer to some of the start-up teams I haven't had the chance to meet yet. Last night, a day that had been going on for ages and seemed to be culminating with rather a long time in the bar here at the Clift, rather randomly ended with a chilly trawl across the city to a place called Vessel. A few of the more hardy travellers amongst us made the trek over there and made full use of the DJ's services taking us to a respectable 2am - a decent attempt to avoid any major jetlag issues methinks. That being said I am up and blogging now, so maybe its not quite sorted yet!

Today holds a brunch event with some press and PR folk, and after that I'm planning on meeting my old friend Johnny and going sailing in the bay - which sounds absolutely amazing - or there's a barbeque 'in the valley' if that falls through.

hiring!

Well its been an interesting time across my various roles the last few weeks. Having been on the look out for good people in project management for months agencyside I finally found one, only to be quickly followed by another. This doesn't happen very often so we'll go for broke and have both if I get my way. Looking forward to having a wealth of it however and I know that the account will benefit from it.

For Mydeo we're still seeking developers but have recently taken on a good guy who's going to help shore up both customer and internal tech support. In a start-up world you can't afford to have someone in every role so this flexibility is going to be a great help, take a load of weight off my shoulders and let some of the rest of team loose to get on with other things.

Thanks for all the messages of goodwill and congratulations on the BestBuy deal too, its been a long time coming and raised a few eyebrows. We are working hard at the moment on the very first phase of integration before any of the marketing starts in earnest so the early signs are good although there's lots to be done. Looking forward to a big christmas!

Partnering with the biggest electronics retailer in the US

Well finally after quite a lot of to-ing and fro-ing we have signed the Mydeo – BestBuy partnership deal and it's out there for public consumption. The official press release is coming out from Best Buy today but its already been picked up by TechCrunch, the Washington Post and CNN.

With a long roadmap of developments and further integration that should hold all users and other partners in good stead there'll be lots more to come on this and the marketing efforts that will surround it.

Video Toolbox: 150+ Online Video Tools and Resources

A very exhaustive list of video resources from mashable here...
Video Toolbox: 150+ Online Video Tools and Resources
Nice to get a mention for Mydeo and some other useful sites in there for the moment.. :)

Media widgetised and ROW

Well last week was a whistlestop week - at least in terms of the number of events and late nights I seemed to have, so I lost my way with the blog a little! Wednesday night saw the second installment of widget week in the chinwag event where a panel discussed widgetisation, intermediation and distributed advertising models.

There were some interesting discussions and points made but I thought the good news was we haven't missed anything just yet. The same questions were popping up amongst an engaged audience and there still seems to be opportunity and ambiguity around in spades. The entertaining HeGe from Nokia and WidSets, an enlightened and enlightening BT representative George, and the ever effusive chair lead the way.

After a few attempts to define a widget (probably the most succint of which, and certainly the only one I recall in its entirety, is 'a tear off of another site') the panel followed some Q&A making a welcome change from the 8 or so uninterrupted presentations that made up MoMo on monday.

We ended up having dinner with HeGe, the lovely Jenny and Priya who turned out to be good friends with my old friend Matt Postgate (whom I should congratulate on his new appointment - congratulations!). That was followed by a trip to Adam Street, wandering into the doubleclick party and then meeting a fellow member of the Millar clan over a martini or two. What was more surprising was that I had never Fran before...

Thursday a much deserved night off, and Friday some dealings with the chaps at DotNetSolutions and Microsoft before a quick trip to Lianne's leaving do and a Curry back at the ranch. ROW just stood for Rest Of Week...

A great night at the Curve ball

Well not so much a ball as a party for the launch of the new Blackberry Curve held at the Kensington roof gardens last night. The RIM guys know how to throw a party and every effort was made to make sure the assembled crowd of celebrities, execs and the odd misfit like me had a good time.

I'll name drop those that were there and I spotted but there were probably more that I either didn't spot or worse didn't recognise; Mark Ronson and Natasha Bedingfield (who both did excellent sets), Martin Offiah, a couple of All Saints, Sophie Bexter, and a lot of people from kids TV. Big up to the really nice guys from MTV we shared seats and bad photos with.

Widget report to follow...

Mixing it up

So, after a 28 hour day with an 8 hour flight losing five and a five hour flight losing three I finally made it to my vegas pit last night. Registration at the mix conference was pretty simple; and it really is an innovative conference; no bag! I guess i always expect to get a branded bag to identify me around the conference city but this time my anonymity is secured (assuming i remember to take the zippy name badge off). We did however get copies of Vista and of Expression Studio - the latter will certainly save some downloading!

It was really pre the main event last night but i briefly hung around at the mashup thing that was being held. It was quite entertaining and there were various people pushing some decent ideas about but not really enough people just yet. Tonight there's going to be a competition where the best mashup created in 4 hours wins - its been done but i've never been so we'll see.

There was of course an ice bar so that's the photo... another hasty and disappointing shot from the BB8300.

Home movies for home movers

Following on from our press release earlier in the year the Telegraph this weekend reported on the growing trend for Estate Agents and even private sellers to take advantage of video for the promotion of properties for sale. Some interesting tips on shooting for property videos here, we are finding that many of the US based 'realtors' use simpler means still to avoid pitfalls of poor production values. Many of our users are collating still shots into videos using tools such as PhotoStory. With high quality video hosting like this you can really zoom into specifics of the property and control the presentation without fear of the dreaded 'wobble-cam'.

Silverlight finally announced

So its finally out, announced and showcased at NAB this morning. The name is not what I was hoping for, but the reaction seems to be pretty good and it is a distinct improvement of wpf/e! Tim Sneath tells us all about what's in it here and for those of us playing with it for a while there's some more technical stuff here... More to follow on this soon...

We start them young

eventful week

Monday saw Rob Loch's Creative Out address future trends in the creative industries. A really varied crowd observed some really interesting things (like the 'good enough' attitude to creative work perpetuated by relentless exposure to UGC) and some not so interesting (the likening of the English to the elderly and the suggestion that we should all focus more on woodwork). Either way it was good fun and there were some good eggs there:



Monday and Tuesday Cary and I were due at the UK technology Innovation and Growth Forum for what looked like a promising programme but turned out to be a little disappointing, mostly in terms of attendance. Last night the Supper Club's social evening was a more sedate affair where it was a pleasure to meet some really great people including the intensely knowledgeable Martin from CoffeeNation and the impressive Adam King of King and Allen

Fate

This morning, quite by chance I picked up a copy of the Guardian's technology supplement kindly left by someone on the tube. My interest was piqued by the promise of a review of the Blackberry 8800 that i am expecting to receive shortly. Whilst picking over a few interesting things in there, something about Microsoft and the EU wondering whether the recent ruling will in fact undermine the whole tech patent process in Europe, the slightly disappointing review, and a comparison of the relative traffic being sent to and from GooTube by their content partners I spotted 'startup' in the title of an article by Victor Keegan. Turns out it is about Saul's OpenCoffee event, the first of which was last Thursday and the second today. This is Cary's rather shaky shot of today's OpenCoffee but there were some interesting folks there; you can just about make out David, Sam and Saul at the back there and she met some interesting potential partners and interested VC's to boot...



Victor says "Someone else is doing well selling high quality video streaming to companies" - honest guv, he means us!

Red Herring's top 200

Some good news today in that Mydeo has been announced as a finalist in the Red Herring 100 Europe 2007 awards. Its a good one to be mentioned in as the great and the good of the investment community always seem to be involved in the event. The full list is here - about five down in the left hand column on the second page you'll see us, you'll also see we are one of the few who kept our ".com" intact - more by accident than design though it must be said! There'll be a press release imminently but that's the highlight..

Serial second placers

Well, another night and another close second it seems for Mydeo and for Cary and I. The ISPA's were good fun, with Lee Hurst providing the right sort of incentive to keep the acceptance speeches short - professional heckling! With him in the chair it was rare that anyone muttered much more than 'thank you' and the awards fair rattled along. He had basically shown fear of no man in his opening piece and that set the tone for the evening.

We were flatteringly up for the 'Best streaming service' award again this year, largely due to doing so well in the technical and performance tests that go to provide the shortlisting process for the awards. Unfortunately the judging criteria include a range of other production and consultancy services that we don't provide so it was with little surprise that we saw the awards won by astream; although i have to admit we thought we could win for 10 minutes or so leading up to the announcement.

I was sat next to the chairman of the judges John Fisher this year so hopefully we'll be a better known quantity next year and you never know, the criteria might even change... Anyway on to the next one and monday holds some hope for us with the Sharp Edge awards I already mentioned - there has been some particular scrutiny around this one so I really hope we get it and break our duck with a nomination that comes good. Wish us luck!