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Some fun news today from Flixwagon, so let's jump right in:

1. New Mobile Client: We've just released our new Symbian mobile client, which offers substantially improved video and audio quality. Also, depending on what version you're currently running, you may discover these new features we added over the past few months: auto-check for future updates, manually posting on twitter and YouTube, 2-way chat and more. Get the latest version via your mobile browser from m.flixwagon.com/nokia. Also, iPhone users, make sure you're running the most current version by refreshing your sources on Cydia or Installer.

2. Sharing and Notifications: We’ve changed the privacy settings on flixwagon.com so that now you can send an encoded direct link to private flix without requiring your viewers to log in (please note though: this also means that whoever you share your flix with can forward those links to others!) Additional changes include adding the video thumbnail in email notifications. To add your contacts, create groups, and set sharing alerts: log in to flixwagon.com, go to Contacts → My Contacts. Also, check out this video tutorial on how to manage your sharing settings.

3. More  Tutorials: and speaking of tutorials, check out our additional demos on how to change the user details generated via Express Registration, and how to share flix on YouTube and Twitter. And speaking of Twitter, check out the new customizable default twitter message via Settings → Twitter.

4. Folio Mag: Following Conde Nast's Brides.com recent fashion show coverage using Flixwagon, here's what Folio Mag had to say about us (third part of the story): http://www.foliomag.com/2008/technologies-look-2009

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We're happy to announce that Flixwagon has just launched its integration with Nokia's Share on OVI service. For the benefit of users of both services, we're including a description of Flixwagon and Share on OVI below, with instructions on how to use the two together:

Flixwagon gives you the power of live video broadcasting in one click, right from your mobile phone. Share with family and friends, enjoy 2-way IM chat with viewers while broadcasting or watching, and easily determine who can watch which video. And now you can also instantly upload videos directly to Nokia's Share on Ovi!

With Share on Ovi you can share your photos, video and audio with one person, groups of people or the whole world, anytime, anywhere. Enjoy unlimited storage and share files of up to 100mb.
 

To start sharing live and stored videos from your mobile phone on Share on OVI here's what you need to do:

1. Download and install the latest Flixwagon application directly on your Symbian phone from here, or by signing up via our our website here. (FAQs)

Note: even if you already have Flixwagon installed, you still need to upgrade to the most recent version. Simply download the client from m.flixwagon.com/nokia and insert your login details instead of performing express registration.

2. On your computer, log-in to http://www.flixwagon.com (using the login details you got via SMS, or those you entered via the website), go to Settings/OVI, and enter your Share on OVI user name and password. Choose whether to have automatic or manual uploads to Share on OVI, and which Share on OVI channel/library to post your videos to.

Please note: Share on OVI requires separate sign-up and login from other OVI properties. To sign up for Share on OVI go to: http://share.ovi.com.

3. Open the Flixwagon application on your phone and click broadcast. If you set your preferences to automatic uploads, your public Flixwagon videos will appear in Share on Ovi instantly (and all your videos will also appear on Flixwagon.com). Remember, only public videos can be shared on Ovi by default.

If you set to manual uploads:
 
1. from the mobile broadcasting screen go to: Options --> Advanced Options --> Upload Flix to OVI.

OR:
 
2. login to your account on Flixwagon.com, open the video page, and click the OVI logo to share.

Feel free to edit titles and tags, post chat messages, and more. You can also view videos directly from your mobile phone on http://share.ovi.com.

Check out the following blog post from NewTeeVee with comments by Facebook and MySpace execs from GigaOM's Mobilize Conference. Both sound bullish on mobile video, with Facebook VP of Growth for Mobile and International Chamath Palihapitiya mentioning services like Flixwagon as the "next logical place to go" and adding: "that’s really cool stuff. To the extent that we can enable people to upload directly and then share that with their friends, I think that’s very powerful."

http://newteevee.com/2008/09/18/mobile-video-is-next-for-myspace-facebook/

Flixwagon was just announced as a finalist in Streaming Media's Readers' Choice Awards 2008 in the Mobile Video Platform category. The winner will be announced during the awards ceremony on September 24. Thanks to all Streaming Media readers who voted for us and to Streaming Media Magazine!

Finalists list:

http://www.streamingmedia.com/article.asp?id=10646

Also, check out our previous post about our very own Sarig Reichert's interview with Streaming Media Magazine about Flixwagon.

Great news: Flixwagon is now available for iPhone 3G and for original iPhones running firmware 2.0.1!
After being first to broadcast from iPhones back in June, and first to launch our public iPhone app for 1.1.4  in July, we're now releasing our app for iPhone 3G and original iPhone 2.0.x. This means we now support all iPhone models and firmware!

To install you'll need an 'opened' iPhone with either Cydia or Installer. Simply open Cydia or Installer, make sure all your versions and resources are up-to-date, and then install Flixwagon from the multimedia folder (under 'Sections' in Cydia, or 'Categories' in Installer 4. You can also find it under the iSpazio directory). Special thanks to Fabiano from iSpazio.net for all the great help with Cydia and Installer!




Flixwagon iPhone Broadcast Screen

Advantages:

• Super-fast sign-up: there is no need to sign-up in advance anywhere. Simply launch the app on your iPhone, enter your phone number, and you'll be instantly logged-in and can start broadcasting video immediately. You'll also receive an SMS message with your new user name and password which you can then change or restore via flixwagon.com.

Express Registration

• Highest Frames per Second rate: Flixwagon broadcasts the highest frame rate per second on iPhone in the market -- at 12 frames per second -- providing a smoother broadcast flow.

Choose between sharper resolution or more frames per second

• Edit video details on the fly: change title and tags directly from the iPhone before or during broadcast. This is especially useful in helping more users discover your broadcast while you're still live, by adding relevant tags and titles based on events in the broadcast.
  

• Set sharing preferences directly from the device: set flix as private, public, or viewable only by certain groups like friends, family, co-workers, etc., all directly from the iPhone and while broadcasting. 

Edit video details and sharing preferences on the fly

• Light app: the entire package is only 98Kb.
  

If you're using iPhone 1.1.4 of older check out info for your phone. Please note, the iPhone apps (1.1.4 and 2.0.1) are both in Alpha, and are used primarily for us to learn and experiment more with the iPhone platform. Feel free to email us comments or feedback about the alpha app at feedback [at] flixwagon [dot] com. Once the iPhone SDK supports native video we expect to develop an app for the new official app store. We don't encourage 'opening' or 'jailbreaking' iPhones and users do so at their own risk.

36 hours, 600 clips, over 6 Million video streams, 60,000 hours of video viewed, 90,000 user comments, at least 2 clips per hour on air during commercial breaks on MTV over the weekend, three 30-minute compilations on TV -- shot entirely on mobile phones, over a dozen locations including backstage at Madison Square Garden, and 3 Jonas Brothers. These are some of the stats from MTV's Jonas Brothers event this past weekend using Flixwagon. We knew this was going to be our biggest event to-date, but it surpassed even our wildest expectations. For example, according to MTV, the latest season finale of reality show The Hills got 5 Million video streams during its first 3 days.  The Jonas Bros event pulled in more traffic in a much shorter period of time, and consisted of live videos made via mobile phones -- making this the biggest live mobile video event in the world to-date that we know of. The official press release is here.

As mentioned last week, we provided MTV with the Flixwagon platform to cover the Jonas Brothers tour of their new album “A Little Bit Longer”. Throughout the 36-hour event, a number of MTV bloggers and reporters made live videos directly to the MTV site and TV studio using mobile phones running the Flixwagon application. The videos showed the Jonas Brothers as they traveled and prepared for their concerts and even showed some candid moments like the brothers reacting emotionally to some items on the news. Even the brothers themselves carried one of the phones and made several live videos throughout the event.
 


MTV Website with the Flixwagon video player, showing Kevin Jonas making a live mobile video using Flixwagon

Apart from the successful event itself, what we’re also extremely happy about is that we were able to show again how the Flixwagon platform can scale and be customized to fit different types of live broadcasts, in terms of number of concurrent broadcasters, web video streams, and streaming from mobile phones to internet and/or television.

All the videos are available exclusively on the MTV site here: http://jonasbros.mtv.com.

Some very exciting news today: for the first time in a music event of such a scale, MTV will use Flixwagon to broadcast live video feeds from numerous mobile phones to the web and TV from the Jonas Brothers tour of their new album this weekend. This is great news, not only because it's the biggest event by a band of this level of fame to receive continuous live mobile video coverage of their tour on and off stage, but also because we're expecting our highest-ever traffic of any single event to-date!



Jonas Brother in Concert (Source: Official Jonas Brothers Flickr)

During the event, a number of MTV bloggers/reporters will broadcast live videos from their 3G mobile phones to the MTV website and TV channel using Flixwagon while they tour with the tween sensations. The videos will give a personal peak behind the scenes of the Jonas Brothers in real time as they travel and get ready for their shows in Jones Beach and Madison Square Garden. The best Flixwagon clips will also be broadcast on MTV's TV channel during commercial breaks, as well as during two special 30-minute compilation programs. Also, viewers on MTV.com will be able to comment on videos and chat with the bloggers and other viewers.



We've been providing MTV with live mobile broadcasting solutions for some time, for example with their live citizen journalist coverage of the Super Tuesday Primaries, but this one should be a record breaker for us in terms of number of videos, viewers, and general fun to be had.

Coverage on both MTV and MTV.com will start on Friday, August 8th 2008 at 4pm ET/PT and run through Saturday August 9th at 10pm ET/PT. Feel free to check out all videos on http://jonasbros.mtv.com. MTV will also show select clips during commercial breaks on MTV Friday and Saturday, and on two compilation shows on Saturday August 9th at 2pm and 10pm.

The MTV bloggers will be carrying mobile phones with the Flixwagon application that allows them to broadcast live video with one click to the web and TV studio (without any bulky equipment or cumbersome file transfers). The entire mobile broadcast is powered by the Flixwagon platform.

Hope you get a chance to watch the live broadcasts, and feel free to give us your feedback or contact us with any questions. Here's some more info from MTV's Buzzworthy blog: http://buzzworthy.mtv.com/2008/08/07/jonas-brothers-are-about-to-get-live-mobile-and-were-going-along-for-the-ride/
 

Join us this coming Thursday (August 7th,10:45AM at the Pace Plaza in NYC) to watch our very own Sarig Reichert participate in the "The New Mobile Paradigm" panel during the Web 2.0 Conference! Sarig will be speaking along with respected peers from MeetMoi.com and MotionBox.com. We look forward to the open and engaging discussion. Hope to see you there! For more information, please visit here

We're happy to announce that our development team at the Flixwagon lab has successfully streamed the first-ever live high-quality video from unlocked iPhones to the web, using Flixwagon's alpha client.

 

While we don't condone or recommend unlocking iPhones, as avid iPhone users ourselves we wanted to experiment with ways to enable flixwagon on the iPhone, until the official SDK supports video. We're going to continue working with the iPhone SDK in the future so we can offer this functionality to all users once video becomes a standard part of the iPhone.

 

After Flixwagon is installed on the phone, users can broadcast videos with one click to the flixwagon website. Videos can be watched live or saved for later. Also, videos can be embedded in blogs via our flixee widget or uploaded to the user's YouTube account. Users can also easily determine which of their contacts to share each video with.

 

We'll release the iPhone version to our Alpha testers in July. In the mean time, if you want to sign up for Flixwagon or get updates on future roll-outs and supported mobile devices, click here. Also, feel free to follow us on Twitter for continuous updates. Finally, check out the iPhone demo below:  

 

Demo of iPhone Streaming Live Video via Flixwagon:

 

 

Video broadcast by an iPhone:

http://twitter.com/flixwagon

Http://www.flixwagon.com

http://flixwagon.com/iphone

We're happy to announce that flixwagon was nominated for MobileBeat 2008: VentureBeat's top mobile applications competition. The competition looks at the most innovative and promising technologies in the mobile space. 

Help us win the competition! Venturebeat is a well known technology blog, and winning the competition can help flixwagon gain more visibility, grow faster, and achieve certain goals ahead of schedule like rolling out new exciting features and supporting additional phones. 

The competition is set up in a way that each registered voter can cast up to 5 votes -- one vote in every 24 hours (we know... took us a few minutes to to figure it out too). So if you'd like to give us your 5 votes, feel free to login once a day and submit your votes. All of us at Flixwagon would very much appreciate it!

So here's what you'll need to do to vote for Flixwagon:

1. sign-up for a voting login ID here:

http://venturebeat.com/wp-login.php?action=register

2. After you sign-up, access the voting page here and vote for flixwagon:

http://venturebeat.com/mobilebeat-2008/companies/

(Flixwagon is in the 'Applications Companies' category).

3. you can return to the voting page every 24 hours up to five times to submit additional votes. Voting ends on June 24, 2008, so make sure you cast all five votes by then.

Thanks and we'll keep you posted on how it goes.

Flixwagon