I’m a blogger, and as such, I am in need of a way to reach out to others while being interesting to readers. Wetoku can help!

Wetoku offers a simple way to meet someone online, record the meeting (or interview) and then share it with others. You may use it for video chat, conduct online interviews, etc.

Our Makeuseof authors have touched on several video chat type offerings that can help with online interviews (Tokbox, Eyejot, and Gmail’s video chat features). Well, wetoku makes meeting face to face with someone far away even easier. We’ll see how easy it is later in this article.

Wetoku takes simplicity to a whole new level. You login, set-up the interview, invite the interviewee, and hit the record button. It really is that easy!

Oh, and the simplicity doesn’t stop there! Sharing the video meetings/interviews with others involves all of just copying and pasting embedding code! Basically, you meet the person, hit record, hit stop, and the code pops right up! Copy and paste it like you would a YouTube video (or some other video sharing site) and there you go!

I would personally like to see some more options on the sharing end of things. I would like to see the ability to download the file for safe keeping AND for sharing on other social video sites like YouTube.  They are still working on things, and from what I can tell, they seem to be listening to feedback, so there’s still hope!

Setting up an account is really simple. Just sign up with the invitation code you were provided with (see the end of this article to get one). Once signed up and logged in, you’ll want to click the “start your interview” button and enter the information for the new online interview, including title, names and a description. Once that’s all set up, you’ll be faced with a cool invitation link which you promptly send to your interviewee anxiously awaiting the online interview:

You have to allow your camera to be detected, nothing new to web-based webcam operation. Once you and the interviewee are both on, the video will look similar to this (only with much prettier faces, I’m sure):

The round button is the record button. There is also a nifty little settings panel. I think that only pro accounts have the option of the higher quality videos (I tested the differences of quality and there is a difference). 

You can also change the volume of the microphone:

When you’re done recording, you can choose to redo it or publish it and you’re given the embed code. It’s that easy! When finished, you’ll have an online interview similar to this one conducted by wetoku Dave of Rick Calvert, CEO of Blogworld and New Media Expo:

And that’s just about all there is to it. With wetoku you can compete with the other “talking heads” out there, talking and interviewing people from all over the world!

Like I mentioned in the beginning, wetoku is a new company and they are still in private beta. They gave us 200 invites to share with you all! If you’re interested in an invite, just toss me an email timlenahan[at]makeuseof[dot]com with the EXACT phrase “wetoku invite” in the subject line (these emails will be filtered by the subject line so it must be exact or you may be overlooked) and I’ll email you an invitation code. First come first serve!

Check them out! When you do, let us know your thoughts in comments. And in case you’re familiar with some other tools to conduct video interviews share them with us in comments.

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In those circumstances I need a good tool that can record the phone call so that I can later transcribe it into a text interview. If you want to know how do you use skype for these sort of interviews – my tool of choice for this task is HotRecorder. HotRecorder is one of the most effective tools to record any VoIP call, not only Skype. However, if you are a Skype user you can rest assured that it’s a tool that’s very well integrated with the Skype application.

Getting Set Up to Record a Skype Call

Installing and using HotRecorder is about as simple as it gets. There’s virtually no setup. After you run the install and launch the application, it attaches (literally) to your Skype window. Whenever you move your Skype window around the screen, the HotRecorder window stays attached at the upper left edge.

There are a few things that you may want to configure in HotRecorder depending on your preferences. For example, in the options menu, you can assign a folder on your computer to save all of the audio files. The Sound Quality and Recording Type settings are also important because they’ll ultimately determine how quickly the size of your audio file grows.

If you have a huge hard drive and are only recording the call for yourself, by all means keep the sound quality high and use Stereo sound. However, if your intent is to email the file or you’d like to store it on smaller media that doesn’t have quite as much storage capacity, you may want to consider using Medium or Low quality.

Recording a Skype Call

When you hit “Rec” and then dial a phone number or connect with another user on Skype, you’ll see the HotRecorder display status change to “Recording” and the size of the audio file updates as well so that you know how much space the audio file is going to consume on your hard drive or USB drive.

The current time duration of the call is also displayed, so if you’re running a Podcast or radio show and you don’t want the conversation to go beyond a certain time interval, you’ll know exactly how long the discussion is going. If there are parts of the conversation that you don’t want to record, just click on “Pause,” and then when you’re ready to start rolling again you can click “Rec” again and the call will continue.

Once you click on “Stop,” you’ll be presented with the screen above so that you can fill out details about the phone call including who you talked to and anything else you want to note about the call. The important field is “Conversation with” because the listing of your calls shows this clearly, and it’s one of the best ways you’ll have of remembering your calls. You can use any filename convention you like, so keep it in a format that you’ll be able to organize. In my case I sort all of my interviews by date, so I keep the date in the filename.

Once you click on save, you’ll see the application encoding the audio and saving it to file. One interesting thing to note here is how the audio will get encoded when you choose audio. HotRecorder saves the conversation in 2 channels – meaning that during playback your interviewee’s voice will play on the left and your voice will get played on the right. This is actually pretty cool if someone has stereo headphones. Unfortunately if one of your listeners has mono headphones or will be listening to your audio file on any mono device – the conversation will seem oddly “one-sided.”

Playback and Extra Options

Playing conversations back after you’re done recording is as simple as clicking on the “Player” tab.

When you click on the Player button, you’ll see a list of all of the conversations you’ve had. As I mentioned above, the saved recordings are displayed by who the conversation was with. If you accumulate a lot of conversations over time, there’s also a search feature available (this is where your description and keywords will come in handy).

There are a couple of cool extra features with HotRecorder, and one of them is an answering machine. Personally, I don’t use this feature – but I have to admit I like the fact that unlike your typical answering machine, HotRecorder will record the message that your caller leaves, attach the file to an email, and send off the email to any email address you like. You can be anywhere in the world and never miss a phone message again as long as you have Internet access to check your email.

If you run a podcast or a radio show, another cool feature are the “emotisounds,” which let you embed various sound effects into the conversation. This can get really hilarious if you play it right. Whenever someone says something that you don’t like, just click “boo” or if they’re boring you to death just click on “Snore” – you’ll have your listeners in stitches.

If you use HotRecorder the way that I do – that is, recording phonecalls for later playback and transcription to text, the free version is more than enough. I don’t care what format the file is stored in and I really don’t care about the advertisement panel at the top. However if you want to convert your files over to MP3 or WAV format so you can use them anywhere, you’ll need the inexpensive premium version that comes with an embedded AudioConverter.

You might also want to check out earlier Simon’s article that lists a couple of alternative programs to record Skype calls.

How do you use Skype to do interviews? Do you have your own solution for recording VoIP calls? Share them with the MUO readers in the comments section below!

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Q: How did you come up with the idea for a music album torrents site?

A: I’m a music lover, and I always use BitTorrent to get my fix. I was disappointed with all the public indexers and the private trackers. I found the experience of searching for music in the first ones very tiresome, always having to navigate through a lot of irrelevant search results and dead torrents.

I grew tired too of the strict rules of most of the private trackers, and the elitism of some of their communities.

Those reasons motivated me to create a new kind of music torrents site, open for everyone and that offered a user experience comparable to the best e-commerce websites.

We all who constantly seek new music deserve something better, so I tried to build a website I would enjoy using, a website where:

The main content is always the music, sorted accordingly by albums, artist, and genres. The torrent files is the way to get what you want, and not an end in itself. Search and download for music was a pleasant visual experience, and not a burden. You always have a lot of information about what you are about to download, to make sure that is what you are actually looking for.

It’s not only about the search, it should help you to discover new music, always offering recommendations of albums and artists similar to the ones you like.

And above all things, that is fun to navigate freely, exploring music by genre, artist, year, similarity, etc., and always one click away to download whatever you like.

I thought that many people would share my point of view, and appreciate this new approach for a music torrents site. Being an experienced web developer, I decided to make it real.

Q: Has the RIAA/IFPI threatened to sue?

A: Yes, they already threatened us many times citing the DMCA, a law that doesn’t apply in my country, and where no other legislation is applicable to what we do. [I won’t disclose my location or name because]

Sooner or later, the RIAA, IFPI or a similar organization will try to shut us down, so, the less they know about us, the better.

Q: What would you like to see from artists and labels regarding piracy?

A: They need to realize that their old business models won’t work anymore in the digital age, […] we are living a revolution in the way the music is being consumed and distributed. They will all need to think outside the box and be willing to take risks if they want to survive, trying new ideas in order to adapt to a scenario dominated by the P2P technologies, [which are] unstoppable […].

Trent Reznor is a fine example of how the embrace the internet and thrive as a musician without a label, a middleman that should be gone soon.

Q: How do you feel about the ongoing lawsuit against ThePirateBay?

A: The final verdict will be very important and representative, to be taken in consideration by all the admins of torrents sites […], and specially those who are based in the European Union.

And I’m afraid that’s the real goal of this trial, a political trial that has nothing to do with justice as trying to serve as dissuasive propaganda.

Personally, I think that any law that see as criminals nearly all the youths of today and those who give them what they want [..] is clearly wrong. […] Of course, we’re in the same side,I could find myself in the same place, eventually. I wish we where bigger and able to do something to help them.

Q: How hard was it to develop the backend code and how long did it take?

A: The coding wasn’t as hard as defining the UI design, layout and navigation, that took me many iterations to get it right. It took me a few months to get a working prototype, that showed that the project could be viable, useful, and worth to be finished. In total, the development of the platform took me one year, working the first seven or eight months part time besides my day job.

Q: Why not let users report bad albums rather than hand picking by administrators?

A: I believe it’s safer this way, stopping torrents with spam and viruses before they are available for download. Besides, although the process that gets the metadata for the albums is automated, it requires supervision and manual approval, and that could be tiresome and boring for the users, leading them to upload less torrents.

Q: How do you plan on monetizing the site?

A:  For now, we’re focusing on building a community, drive more traffic and add even more features that could put us ahead other competing websites.

I guess that the obvious choice would be putting ads, but I’m reluctant to do that. In the meantime I will try to find another way to monetize the website.

Q: Would you like to tell us about your favorite 3 albums of all time?

A: Wow, this is by far the most difficult question. So hard that I’m going to cheat, and list a few of my favorite artists instead:

• Johann Sebastian Bach, by far my most listened, since I was a kid.
• Other classical composers: Mozart, Beethoven, Chopin, Brahms, Tchaikovsky, Schubert, Paganini, Vivaldi, Handel and a few others. Astor Piazzolla, Björk, Portishead, Nine Inch Nails, The Mars, Volta Morphine, Sonic Youth, Massive Attack, Thievery Corporation, Tricky, Death Cab for Cutie, The Decemberists, Mogwai, Tool.

Q: What can you tell us about your audio gear and listening patterns?

A: My gear is nothing too fancy, a moderately good sound system with the aux[iliary] input connected to my iMac, from which I play all the music with iTunes (I don’t use or buy CDs anymore, and I don’t listen to the radio either). I worry more about convenience and compatibility, than absolute sound quality, for example I don’t use lossless audio formats, and neither do I want the ultimate audio gear.

I listen to music every day, all day long, at home or on the road with my iPod: it’s the cornerstone of my life.

I hope I asked all the questions you wanted – but if not – leave a comment and I’ll pass along the questions. Visit Coda.fm music album torrents site and experience a new kind of music downloading – then come back and tell us what you think about it. We thank the Coda.fm Admin for this great interview.

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To recap, Digsby is a messaging application which lets you talk to people on all of the major instant messaging networks such as MSN, AIM, Yahoo, ICQ, Gtalk and even Facebook Chat. More than that it also lets you connect up email accounts and social networks accounts including Myspace, Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn. It also supports customization, skinning and even synchronizes your account details and Digsby skins between computers.

Steve Shapiro is the project manager for Digsby and he took the time to answer a few questions concerning this project:

Tell us about the ‘Digsby’ logo/mascot…

We wanted something that was a mascot and not just a logo so that it would “be Digsby” – we felt this would be a good way to brand it as a consumer friendly product. Another important aspect of it was that it needed to look good as a 16×16 or 32×32 icon since it is used on the desktop and in the tray.

How many people do you have working on this project? Is this purely a hobby project or do you hope eventually Digsby will provide some kind of revenue stream?

Digsby is developed by a company so we do need to pay the rent and keep the lights on.

What about this project aren’t you currently happy with? Is any part of the application frustrating you feature-wise?

We would love to finish stabilizing the Windows build so we can release for Mac and Linux!  We’ve had tons of requests.

What Instant Messaging application did you use before Digsby?

I used AIM 5.9 + Gtalk.

What is your personal favourite feature?

The email integration.  It’s nice not to have to keep checking my inbox through out the day.  If I get an email that’s important I can open it right from there.   If it’s spam, I can mark it appropriately without ever going to my inbox.

I’m interested to hear your comments on the whole ‘perpetual beta’ a lot of companies have going on these days. Are you working towards an actual version 1.0 release, or is Digsby going to do a Google for the next few years?

It’s a little more complex than that.  There will never really be a 1.0 or a 2.0 but it will also not stay in beta for years.  We adopted a development cycle that is more typical of a website than a software product. A software product typically releases version 1.0 and then there is a massive effort to release 2.0. You need to then convince people to start using 2.0 because it is better while also providing support for 1.0.

With a website, every time you visit the site you see the newest version.  Digsby auto-updates each time you run it so you are always running the latest release. We release new versions almost every week.  Check out http://changelog.digsby.com.  Once it is a bit more stable we will remove the alpha or beta tag that we put at the end of each release but the fast release cycle will remain unchanged so there won’t be a version 1.0 and version 2.0…..just constant builds that keep making Digsby better and better.

Any hints you’d like to share about something big which is yet to come?

Mac + Linux releases!

What do you think of Digsby becoming the ‘Firefox’ of instant-messaging applications?

We have seen that tag line in many reviews and are honored by it.  Firefox is a great browser and being put on the same level makes us smile and encourages us to push even harder to improve Digsby.

Do you have any opinions you would care to share on the latest Windows Live Messenger?

It’s a great IM client in my opinion.

So thanks to Steve.

If you haven’t tried Digsby out yet then I would very much recommend it!

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Since then I’ve been following the development of Songbird with a great deal of interest and was excited when Songbird 0.7 was released a few weeks ago.

This release introduced a great new UI, more features and significant performance improvements, all very welcome additions.

With Songbird on track and cranking up the pace for a version 1 release by December I decided to contact the Songbird team for an interview about their project. Rob Lord is the founder and CEO of Songbird and took the time to answer these questions about Songbird:

Perhaps you’d like to describe the team behind Songbird. I believe a number of you have been involved in previous media projects?

Hi Laurence, thanks for the interview. Yes, our Pioneers of the Inevitable team includes key developers from media players including Winamp and the Yahoo! Music Jukebox.

What do you think about development in other media players? With 4 main choices for consumers (iTunes, WMP, Media Monkey and Winamp) and each with a pretty unique market, things seem to have slowed down in the last couple of years. Apple only releases a new version of iTunes when they have a new product to peddle and Microsoft with their newest OS.

Our perspective is that the traditional desktop media player feature list is complete, thus there has been little innovation in desktop media players for years. However, what happens when a desktop media player is connected to the Web is an unexplored and intriguing opportunity. Songbird re-architects the traditional desktop media player to go there. Songbird is an open, customizable desktop media player that is built to play the Web.

Songbird has an incredible amount of potential. Have you been getting much interest or support from significant online companies such as Amazon? Without an iTunes/iPod lock yet still supporting them I would assume companies would be jumping on an opportunity like Songbird =)

Songbird has attracted a lot of attention from consumer electronics companies, especially handset makers, and media retailers/service providers. We’ll be making announcements as the partnerships are ready to launch.

We hear everyday from device makers that they want to focus on their devices. We hear everyday from digital media retailers, subscription, radio, video, recommendation, locker and other service providers that they want to focus on their services. Yet everybody – users, developers, device makers and service providers – wants those devices and services to work together with software. But only Apple offers a credible integrated service + software + device experience. Songbird is the solution for all those who benefit from open, customizable media player software. Songbird is the open solution for service + software + device integration.

That said, Songbird isn’t yet ready for everyone. If a user needs full feature parity with traditional desktop media players or has never installed a Firefox add-on, Songbird isn’t ready for them yet.

Songbird is based on Mozilla and not Firefox itself as I initially assumed. Can you explain what this means? Do improvements in Firefox, such as FF3 and 3.1 become part of Songbird? Does the Songbird team work with the Firefox team?

Songbird, like Firefox, is built from the Mozilla platform. So, yes, new Firefox features and enhancements are inherited by Songbird. Also our team provides testing, fixes and patches back to Mozilla.

What’s the best song you’ve ever discovered through Songbird?

So much to choose from! A Ratatat remix from the Gorilla vs. Bear music blog comes to mind.

What feature do you miss the most personally when using Songbird? CD ripping and burning?

CD Rip/Burn isn’t an issue for me because I ripped my CD collection years ago. I’m 99% pure digital now. Key for me is support for my iPhone 3G so I can leave my older iPod behind. FYI, CD Rip/Burn is on our roadmap.

What Media Software did you use before Songbird?

Winamp was for many including me the seminal MP3 player. Winamp was first to go big in the 90s with skins, plug-ins, EQ, visualizations, etc. and its community responded with thousands of extensions – the kind of vital community we see supporting Firefox today. In the last five years, I found myself recommending iTunes to others for its relative simplicity — and found myself using it for the solid service + software + device integration.

The approach for Songbird is almost a ‘make-your-own’ media player, even more so than Firefox is as a browser. By that I mean the Songbird Media player includes only the most basic functions and almost all new features, device support and codecs are all added via extensions. It’s a great idea as users can avoid having any features they’ll never use (such as iPod support when they don’t have an iPod), however will the most popular extensions eventually become part of Songbird, or are you keeping the system like it is?

You nailed our thinking. Like Firefox, Songbird will offer a baseline of what ever media player user needs and then offer customization via add-ons to your specific media player preferences. We’re experimenting with including highly requested add-ons, such as Last.FM integration, in the first-run bundle.

Does using Songbird make you more attractive to the opposite sex?

Works for me and my lady. Try playing the Groove Salad channel via SHOUTcast for best results. YMMV. ; )

Tell us your five favourite extensions.

Hard to pick as there are over 250 Songbird add-ons currently – and they are all specialized features. We’re very grateful to all the individual Songbird add-on developers that have embraced Songbird and the Songbird community.

Rather than pick favorites, here are the add-ons with the widest appeal based on downloads:

Wikipedia – artist biography of the currently playing artist.
Mashtape – a mash-up of Flickr photo, YouTube vdeos, Last.FM bios of the currently playing artist.
MediaFlow – Like iTunes Coverflow, view you music library by flipping through album art.
Last.FM Cover Fetcher – retrieve album art from Last.FM for your music library.
Last.FM Recommendations – artist recommendations from Last.FM based on currently playing artist.

Songbird have also been cool enough to provide us with a Songbird T-shirt to give away! To win this just comment below and tell us the craziest place you’re going to wear it (When you get the shirt we expect a photo proving it – and we’ll publish it! So no bare bottoms please!)

NOTE FROM THE EDITOR : MUO employees are not eligible to enter! This one’s for the readers!

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I recently interviewed the Founder of Dropbox, Drew Houston, to answer some questions I had about the service. You can read the interview below, after my short review of the service.

Dropbox Review

After installing Dropbox, there is a folder placed in your My Documents named “My Dropbox”. To sum the service up in 1 sentence: any files placed into this folder will both be uploaded to the Dropbox servers, and will be synchronized with any other clients in your account.

So, in a single computer situation, this Dropbox folder is effectively a backup solution. If you have more than one PC in the account, any files placed into this folder on one computer will automatically be synchronized onto all others running Dropbox in the same account.

This creates a nice way to send files to and fro – my old method was either a) email to myself or b) put them on my USB keychain. Although those old methods work, Dropbox makes the process of transferring files to and from work absolutely effortless.

Installing Dropbox is easy and after the installation, there is nothing to manage. Files placed into this folder are sent to the Dropbox servers in a secure manner, and once they are there they are encrypted. Dropbox currently uses Amazon S3 storage system “in the cloud” for their data storage.

In addition to this basic use, I have found the following features to be very handy:

Revisioning System

The ‘killer’ feature for me is that Dropbox also includes a versioning system. For those not familar with versioning systems, it allows you to keep multiple versions of a file. This helps in case you need to ‘roll back’ a change if you are coding, or just for general use and tracking of updates. It also helps on the backend because if only changes of a file need to be sent to the server, so much bandwidth can be saved.

Photo Gallery

Another neat feature is a built-in photo gallery. Drag photos to the “photos” folder and they are automatically available for viewing on the web in a simple manner (Hi Grandma!)

In summary, I think Dropbox is the best online storage solution I have seen. It combines online file storage, folder syncing, and versioning control in one simple to use package. They are constantly rolling out new updates, so look for more features soon! If you would like more information before you sign up, please check out the screencast bellow. It’s both entertaining and informative — and there are lots of easter eggs!

Plus since you got this far, read my interview with Drew and get an invite at the bottom of this article!

Interview with Dropbox Founder Drew Houston

1) The first obvious question – what makes Dropbox different from the other online backup / storage solutions?

Drew: Unlike other companies, which tackle only backup (e.g. Mozy), or only sync (e.g. Foldershare), or just putting files online (e.g. box.net), we provide one solution to all of the problems people have managing their files. I was looking for some kind of continuous rsync + subversion + tortoisesvn-style-shell-integration + web access holy grail, found it didn’t exist, and then got to work.. Arash even dropped out of MIT with just a few months left

2) I understand you are using Amazon S3 for storage on the backend; do you have any other sort of data backup plans in case S3 would go down or sustain data loss? Can customers use DropBox for sole storage of their data, or do they need to be concerned with other backups? [An alternative view of this question -- is Dropbox considered a file sharing solution or a backup solution?]

Drew: We’ll be exploring other options (e.g. our own data store), especially for paid customers who want extra redundancy. I will point out though that Amazon does a pretty damn good job of handling large volumes of data and does a great job storing billions of objects and petabytes of data redundantly across multiple data centers. This isn’t easy, and many companies that first built their own data center (e.g. smugmug) found that they could lower costs and drastically increase reliability by using s3. We may not be on s3 forever, and will build our own store in addition, but for now this lets us focus on both the client software and the performance of the layer we’ve developed on top of s3.

The other major point that people might not realize is Dropbox is replicating copies of your data both across all your computers in addition to the online copy. So copies your data are always stored on your own computers, unlike other services which are online-only, Where the one and only copy of your data rests on their servers. This also means you aren’t locked into using Dropbox; if you decide you don’t want to use the service anymore, you’re in complete control of your data.

3) Security is a big concern for many people — how is data secured in transit and on the data store? The more geeky the explanation the better!

Drew: We have our own protocol that runs over “https” that combines binary diffing and compression, so no file data or metadata is *ever* sent over the wire in plaintext form. On the back end, we encrypt all file data using AES-256 before storing it on S3 (this is in addition to the security that Amazon provides.) We are working on a way for people to provide their own private keys or passphrases for people who choose to do so as long as we can preserve the simplicity of the user experience. What some people might find unusual about our team is all of us have been using Linux since the 90’s and so the usual server-side security precautions, etc. are second nature to us.

4) Do you have an ETA on a Linux client? A lot of Ubuntu users would love to get on the boat with this.

Drew: No eta right now. (Though we will tease you and say we’ve had a working client in-house for months, and nearly all of the client code is written in Python.) We want to make sure we can provide at least a decent experience on Linux, even though many Linux users would be comfortable with a CLI version or don’t care about having icon overlays/tray icons.

5) What are the details on the paid accounts? Do you have any specs on online storage, transfer limits, and prices?

Drew: Still finalizing this, but we’re planning to have a free account with some amount of storage and paid accounts for people who want richer sharing options and more storage.

6) Do you plan on targeting home users, business consumers, or both? Why?

Drew: Initially, consumers/professionals, with businesses/teams/enterprise coming later. As you go up the spectrum, you need more bells and whistles/collaboration options, management/configuration options, and things like direct sales teams and/or resellers and other channels — which we’ll definitely tackle later on, but right now we think Dropbox seems to resonates with individual users and small groups in its current form.

6) As a company, what are your goals?

Drew: We want to change the way people think about files and storage. It’s 2008, and despite all the hype around services/storage “in the cloud”, the most common way people manage their files is by carrying around USB drives, emailing themselves attachments, and manually uploading files to websites.

We’ve always thought that in “the future”, you sit down at any computer and your stuff is always there, always backed up, always version controlled, etc, but for some reason no one had made it practical. Plus it’s a hell of a lot of fun designing a distributed filesystem to support tens of millions of people.

7) Finally – Your screen cast was reminiscent of the “You suck at Photoshop” screen casts. Coincidence?

Drew: I’ve seen a few of them and they’re hilarious, though there is no deliberate connection. Trying to sneak surprises under the radar made making the screencast a lot more fun and hopefully more entertaining than the usual pragmatic, slow-paced, corporate demos we’re all used to.

Invites to Dropbox Beta!

Dropbox kindly offered us 100 invites to hand out. Click the link below to sign up, or use the invite code “makeuseof” to sign up!

http://getdropbox.com/beta/makeuseof

(By) Dave is an IT Manager by day and technology consultant by night. He is interested in all things internet but is specifically interested in system administration, network security, history, and backpacking. He lives near Philadelphia with his family. See his blog @ www.systembash.com.

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• 1. SurfTheChannel.com
• 2. Joox.net
• 3. Sidereel.com
• 4. QuickSilverScreen.com
• 5. Alluc.org

So lets take a look at them ….

(1) SurfTheChannel [ www.surfthechannel.com ]

Videos online: 53908
Members: 24,586
Creation date: November 2007

STC has risen from nowhere and became a good resource in just 2 months. The site now boasts over 50k movies and TV episodes with around 500 new ones added every day. Most episodes that air in the US appear on the site within a couple hours and the latest movies hit the site as soon as they show in theatres.

The site design is very reminiscent of the old TV Links with a simple 1 page listing for Movies, TV, Anime, Music Videos, Documentaries & Indie TV. This makes it very easy to scroll down a category and see what’s on offer.

As with any site like this dead links are an issue however STC claims to have automatic monitoring system and an active mod team to ensure that dead videos are kept down to a minimum. The interafce is updated regularly with new treats each time, for instance latest version allows users to switch between the classic skin and a black Stage6 inspired skin. MakeUseOf caught up with STC’s Director Of Operations Coco Lambucca for a chat:

MUO: You’ve become quite a rising star in 2 months. What’s the secret?

STC: STC’s community and staff is the reason for its success. From the hard working Link Hunters, Mods and Admin right down to the normal members. Everyone plays a part, if a user wants some sort of new functionality in we’ll try and make it happen. Without our community we would just be another soulless link site that are so common nowadays.

MUO: Worried about copyright?

STC: Funny you should ask that, we’ve just received a letter demanding we take down a network’s shows or face 5 months in prison and $1,000,000 fine. I could repeat the worn out mantra that we don’t host the files they are on YouTube, Stage6 etc but I think anyone who is familiar with this model knows the arguments for and against. We are careful to abide the laws of our country which is Sweden and have a zero removal policy for our listings.

MUO: So how do you see STC and sites like it in the future?

STC: I think a tipping point is approaching in the world of online media and the networks are coming round to the idea that new delivery mechanisms are needed. People want to watch what they want, when they want it. They also do not want to pay in the traditional subscription sense but accept that a pre-roll ad or popup is an acceptable trade off for their “All the time, any time” needs. This is a massive untapped revenue stream that the content owners are missing out on because they’re still trying to control users with antiquated rights management systems. They desperately need to re-engage with their customers. I would like to think that there are some forward thinking companies out there who understand the possibilities open to them by working with us in a collaborative way and we have been reaching out via mutual contacts to see what can be accomplished. Early indications are encouraging.

MUO: Any downsides to running a site like this?

STC: Apart from the lack of sleep, high stress levels, hostile lawyers and jealous rivals slandering us on other sites? Nope no downsides at all :p.

Good luck to STC, we think they have something special going on and have a great community to boot.

(2) Joox.net [ www.joox.net ]

Videos online: 15,383
Members: 241,488
Creation date: May 2007

Joox’s sleek black design is an instant hit when you visit. The site has minimal advertising and currently uses just Stage6 videos (which guarantees good video quality). It’s fast, simple and very popular. Built and administrated by 1 person, moderated by a volunteer staff of 16. This site is a gem that is sure to rise even more. We managed to pull admin Christoffer away from his keyboard for some words:

MUO: Other sites have varying views on the legality of their sites, what’s your take?

Joox: Well, I’ll be following the trial against The Pirate Bay that’s about to start here in Sweden right now. And if they find them guilty of committing some crime by providing “links” to copyrighted materials (their words not mine), then maybe I’ll move the hosting to Asia or something. I wouldn’t shut the site down unless I have no choice or they nuke my server .

MUO: Do you have a removal policy?

Joox: Well, I don’t host anything, so I could only remove my links to the content not the content itself. I’ve got 2 warning emails so far and by the time I read them, stage6 had already taken down both movies in question. If I go to trial I might say that I have, but in reality, no there is not much point.

MUO: So what can we expect for the future from Joox?

Joox: I plan on adding lots of features like grouping different videos when there’s more than one part to a movie, adding IMDB info and DVD covers to the video pages and also allowing other sources then stage6 for the Divx files. Our members have given me lots of ideas on the forum.

MUO: Are there any sites like Joox that you like yourself?

Joox: I’ve never liked any other sites besides the now dead TV Links (which I discovered after I made Joox), I liked them because they included much more content, sometimes when your desperate you don’t care if it’s a flash video. . I don’t visit any of the current video link sites as most have bad designs, lots of ads (I try to keep the amount of ads to a minimum on Joox, only what’s needed for my hosting costs) and most of them steal Joox video links.

Joox is the site that everyone names as their favourite and that’s down to their no-nonsense design and simplicity done well. Everyone will always choose quality videos over flash if they have the choice and Joox has an abundance of top quality content that is sure to satisfy anyone.

(3) QuickSilverScreen.com [www.quicksilverscreen.com]

Videos online: 8238
Members: 244,160
Creation date: 2004

QuickSilverScreen or QSS as it’s followers call it has one of the busiest communities out of all 5 sites reviewed. They are a friendly bunch of people who have a real sense of fun buzzing about the place. The site itself consists of Stage6 videos of which they have a nice selection. The staff consists of 3 forum admins, 1 server admin, 13 mods and 10 or so chat mods.

When asked if they are worried about copyright issues the resounding answer was a “No!” from admin “The Tsar”. He went on to say “we don’t host or distribute any copyrighted content what so ever. If anyone at all should be worried, it’s the guys like stage6 who rely on hosting and distrusting copyrighted content for profit. We remove videos if they are porn, racist or bigoted and that’s it.”.

MUO: What’s in store for the future?
QSS: Lots more movies, TV shows and documentaries!

MUO: Do you like/use any of your rival sites?
QSS: Joox and only banned. Original idea and they didn’t spam everywhere to get where they are. Also the site is clean and easy to use.

(4) Sidereel [www.sidereel.com]

Videos online: 153781
Members: 25656
Creation date: February 2007

Sidereel has a great design, nice graphics and feels user friendly however it suffers from trying to be all things to all people. It uses a “framer” style where rather than show the videos on their pages they frame the source site’s video page, this unfortunately has a distracting effect when trying to watch a video unless you make the video go full screen (which then means that resolution is usually bad). Plus some pages have lots of informations and thus look overwhelming. However, if you get used to it you’ll be definitely visitng it again and again. Unlike other sites, Sidereel also lists links to trailers and DVD stores (Netflix, Amazon etc) which can be a bit frustrating.

The negative points aside this site is definitely one to watch, based out of San Francisco it’s likely it has some decent financial backing however it’s servers are located on Leaseweb’s network in the Netherlands so they could run into trouble if BREIN (Entertainment Industry Rights Protection) asks Leaseweb (their hosting company) to shut them down. Leaseweb were co-operative with Dutch authorities over the TV-Links take down. No reply from Sidereel to our request for a few words.

(5) Alluc [www.alluc.org]

Videos online: 86133
Members: unknown
Creation date: November 2006

One of the oldest link sites around. Alluc (pronounced “all you see”) does not play videos on its own pages but supplies links to the original page where the video is hosted. It has a thriving community but gets a lot of flak for its layout and design which can be rather jumbled and messy at times. Dead links are kept relatively low as the community flags any for removal pretty quickly. There are some real gems to be found but for new shows and movies they seem to way behind the other sites. A quick search shows only 2 episodes of The Simpsons as opposed to SurfTheChannel’s 334 episodes.

Alluc did not reply to our requests for a quick chat so unfortunately no insight into the heads of the people who run this legendary site. They have recently removed 1000 of their movies at the request of the MPAA (Motion Pictures Assosciation of America) which could set a dangerous precedent for the future for them.

So that’s it! Share your opinion and criticism in comments.

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