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Veeker Makes Video Instant Messaging a Reality 70

Posted by ScuttleMonkey from the too-much-time-on-the-phone dept.
Stitch_Surfs writes to tell us that the new video instant messaging tool "Veeker" went live today. Able to be embedded in any website, Veeker allows you to share mobile video with your friends. From the article: "In a nutshell, Veeker is instant video messaging. The most basic use case is to shoot 60 seconds of video from your mobile phone and upload this video to Veeker in the form of an MMS. Within about 60 seconds your video is on the Veeker portal where, depending upon whether you sent it to one of three addresses is visible only by you (me@veeker.com) visible to you and your contacts (v@veeker.com) or made available for viewing by anyone who visits Veeker and is inclined to check you out (world@veeker.com)."
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Veeker Makes Video Instant Messaging a Reality More

Veeker Makes Video Instant Messaging a Reality

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  • Moo (Score:5, Funny)

    by Chacham ( 981 ) on Wednesday October 25, 2006 @02:33PM (#16582274) Homepage Journal
    This whole thing sounds confusing. Could someone send me a video showing how its done?

  • Video voicemail (Score:3, Interesting)

    by timeOday ( 582209 ) on Wednesday October 25, 2006 @02:36PM (#16582334)
    Don't the cellphone companies already have convenient ways for people to send video voicemails to each other? Not that their systems would do everything this new company is doing, but it would be a good way to judge demand... which apparently isn't very high. (Perhaps because cellphone networks don't have high enough bandwidth to make it sufficiently cheap yet).

    • Re:Video voicemail (Score:4, Insightful)

      by 99BottlesOfBeerInMyF ( 813746 ) on Wednesday October 25, 2006 @02:47PM (#16582528)

      Don't the cellphone companies already have convenient ways for people to send video voicemails to each other? Not that their systems would do everything this new company is doing, but it would be a good way to judge demand... which apparently isn't very high.

      As near as I can tell, this offering does not replicate the functionality of the cell phone companies, but relies upon it. It looks like you use your service to send a short video to this company and they post it to a Website for you and let you manage who can access that site. Only people who make an account can view the videos, so it will never go anywhere.

    • Don't the cellphone companies already have convenient ways for people to send video voicemails to each other?

      Kind of, my cell phone company only allows me to send videos to other people on the same Wirless company easily (SprintPCS) but it could be due to my crappy phone being so old.
    • Hi timeOday, There is no question that these are early days for mobile video communication. There are some interesting numbers available, however, that indicate that the time to start Veeker is now: 70 million mobile phones are equipped with video cameras today; by 2009, nearly 100% of all mobile phones will be equipped with video cameras--both of these stats from IDC. Monthly, according to Telephia, 8 million people in the US shoot video with their mobile phones. A very small percentage of them ever g

  • One Problem.... (Score:4, Insightful)

    by SuperStretchy ( 1018064 ) <acatzr800@gmail . c om> on Wednesday October 25, 2006 @02:37PM (#16582340)
    ... Video messaging rates are rediculous. Maybe if one could send the video via a non-phone SMS service, things might look hopeful.
    Interesting concept however.

    • Re: (Score:2, Funny)

      by Anonymous Coward
      ... Video messaging rates are rediculous.

      Maybe they could convert the video to asciimation. [asciimation.co.nz]

      I would feel a lot better about using their service then.
    • Well, if you have a Bluetooth enabled phone, and it's not crippled by a shoddy cellular carrier (*cough* Verizon *cough*), you can always shoot the video, store it, and then upload it to your computer via BT and go that way onto the net.

      I assume that the next generation of WiFi-enabled phones will be able to upload photos and video that way, working basically like network cameras do now (they either upload files to an FTP server somewhere, or they present themselves as an FTP server so another process can d
      • My VX8300 takes unlimited video (except when it comes to nearing the edge of its 512 mb MicroSD threshold (purchased via ebay (so what, I use nested parentheses, I'm a programmer))) and transfers over super quick with my modified vx6000 data cable (had to gnaw away at a tab). From there I convert the proprietarily encoded video to something else and send it on its merry way. 30 seconds = ~500k.
    • Here's a good question: What's the point? With as many free websites (GooTube, MySpace, etc.) that allow you to post video, albeit to a non-specific recipient, what use does this service have? Also, there are synchronous methods for video (iChat AV, Yahoo Voice and Video, etc.) does this really have a market? I'd say this is too little too late. It doesn't supplant any existing technologies or methods, and certainly doesn't introduce anything innovative or even new. Hell, I can send up to a 10 MB vide

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by TFloore ( 27278 )
        Here's a good question: What's the point?

        Have you looked at how little 3G cellphone network services are being used? I wouldn't be terribly surprised to learn that Veeker was financed by some of the cellphone service providers, in the hopes that they would come up with something that people would actually use with the MMS/3G services that are currently bleeding red ink.

        Seriously. The GP said "rates are ridiculous" and that should be a clue. When you find a service the depends on you spending crazy amounts o

  • and? (Score:3, Insightful)

    by solistus ( 556078 ) on Wednesday October 25, 2006 @02:42PM (#16582436) Homepage
    First off, the title to this story is a bit misleading. Video IM has been around for a long time. This is significant because it's mobile video IM. Second, who is actually going to use this? All it is is an automated way to host video content sent via MMS, something that is pretty trivial to do yourself anyway. How many people really want to record themselves on their cell phone and pay to send it to Veeker so they can... Call someone and tell them the URL to visit to see it? If I want to send video to someone, I can already MMS it to them directly. If I want to update the world on my status, there are ways to update various types of blogs via MMS as well. If I really, really need to be able to upload my little clips of cell phone video to an HTTP server, I'll use my own and write a script to do it for free.
    • All it is is an automated way to host video content sent via MMS, something that is pretty trivial to do yourself anyway.

      Thus, they have almost certainly applied for a patent on the "technology".
    • We have all those better ways of doing this, but we're not the target audience. I could see this service taking off via legions of teenage girls who aren't old enough yet to post homemade Sidekick pr0n to the web, and who need something like an idiot-proof, demographic-targeting, ad-embedding website to do the hard work for them.

    • Has any one of the folks posting comments actually read the article, let alone bothered to sign up? Have any of you looked at the popularity of applications like Umundo or Abuzab that let users post images from their cell phones to their social network profiles in real time? It may not strike adults as all that appealing but the popularity across social networks is such that more images a day are displayed on MySpace via these tools than are uploaded to flickr.

      The application does ride on MMS. That's b

  • I mean seriously, are we that bored?

  • instant? (Score:5, Funny)

    by Speare ( 84249 ) on Wednesday October 25, 2006 @02:43PM (#16582450) Homepage Journal
    Within about 60 seconds, ...

    For extremely large values of 'instant'.

    • For extremely large values of 'instant'.

      And for unrealistically 'imaginary' values of 'real'.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by misleb ( 129952 )
      For extremely large values of 'instant'.


      And a very broad definition of "messaging." Sounds more like a mobile "YouTube" to me.

      -matthew

      • Re: (Score:3, Funny)

        by jb.hl.com ( 782137 )
        Mobile YouTube?! Jesus christ. YouTube is bad enough when people DON'T have it in public places...
      • 60 second Instant Video Messaging = Slow Videoing

        New Products:
        Microsoft Slow Videoer
        Yahoo Slow Videoer
  • Damn, I need to audio instant message my friend about this on my phone. Seriously, can there be any such thing as video instant messaging?
  • I mean think of a goatse man world tour! The Eiffell Tower, Lincoln monument, Mt. Fuji, the Brandenburg gate.....
  • The submission says:
    Within about 60 seconds your video is on the Veeker portal where...


    Wow, a video IM scheme with 60 seconds of latency! Sign me up! ;-)

    • Well, it do give you pretty good bragging rights over the fools on NASA doing Earth-Mars communications! (latency = ~3 minutes)

  • Conflict of interest (Score:2, Insightful)

    by JeffHunt ( 129508 )
    This hardly seems newsworthy, and the Slashdot writeup reads like an advertisement.

    Boo.

  • MMS (Score:2, Interesting)

    by marx ( 113442 )
    So eh.. isn't it faster to MMS my friend directly instead of MMSing Veeker, then waiting for them to forward it to my friend?

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by bazorg ( 911295 )
      yes, but in that case people need to pay every time the clip is forwarded, instead of visiting webpage that hosts the video clip. It's a kind of a MMS to youtube thing. The question is how to upload webcam footage into it?
  • A: Google buys Veeker if Veeker is any good.

    --

    From the referenced Mobile Crunch article...

    "However when your executive team of four founders has generated a combined half a billion dollars in aggregate exit valuation in their prior gigs the bar gets raised considerably."

    Past performance doesn't guarantee future performance. Who cares about how well the founders have done. How well are they doing? Specifically, how well are they doing with Veeker?

    Ultimately, the success comes down to usability and cost. If t
    • "However when your executive team of four founders has generated a combined half a billion dollars in aggregate exit valuation in their prior gigs the bar gets raised considerably."

      Which bar would that be? The state bar?
    • Comment removed based on user account deletion
    • Are going to HAVE to start doing this.

      If they are going to rid their site of copyrighted material then their only option is to make it even easier to submit user created content. I'm sure cell phones are by far the main source of user generated videos in the world, so that seems like a sensible direction.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by jrumney ( 197329 )

      Also, just curious, but couldn't YouTube do this in, let's say, a few months?

      Half a day would be more like it.

      1. Install mail server. (1 hour)
      2. Set up mail aliases for all users. (writing script 59 minutes 50 seconds, running it 10 seconds)
      3. Write procmail script to pull out video/3gpp mime attachments, and post them to the site. (2 hours)
      4. ....
      5. Profit!
  • But what I'd like to see is a service that allows me to just send a video from my cell phone and have it automagically appear in a flash embedded web video I could link to on the internets. Anyone know anything of that manner?
  • for my daughter to waste money and I'll bet more dropped calls on already saturated cell towers!
  • Video messaging, rather than Instant Video Messsaging? Sound like buzz words win again.
  • So because no one has turned on the videophone feature in their cell network yet, this company popped up. As soon as they do (and they will soon), this company is totally useless as far as I can tell.

    Must be nerve wracking being 1 SIM card update away from bankruptcy.
  • Video instant messaging/video conferencing has been around for near a decade.
  • I have to take a video of myself, on my Razr, which unless I hack the phone, I only get 15 seconds or so. Then send it via MMS and potentially incure a $0.35 charge (depending on what service I have), then the person Im sending it to has to log on to the internet to see it?! Why not just send it to their phone anyways?!


    This service isn't all that practical.

  • Don't by stock (Score:2, Insightful)

    by ZombieSquirrel ( 978302 )
    File this one with the video phone--it sounds cool, but the average person is rarely going to use it. Moving pictures are simply not needed in 1-to-1 telecommunications. Too slow, too awkward, to clunky. 1 to 1 video will never go away, but mark my words, in one hundred years we will still have voice phones.

    Remember we have had the technology for video phones for years now. Where are they?

    Except for phone sex. This would probably improve phone sex. . . Or maybe not . . . I have to think about that par
  • Slashdot makes free advertising a reality.
  • Sure signs of being desperate for hype and VC cash:

    - your service is like any other service, but attempts to differentiate by marketing same old same old, by giving it new names (not videos, but video instant messages..)

    - your trademark needs (lame) "origin of" explanation, and tries to inject new words in your dictionary to induce word of mouth: "VEEKS are Video Peeks"... Veeks?! Zunes... YouTube that Meebo Orkuts, to hell and back.

    - trying to be overly hip, energetic and youngster-ish (err...), by showing

  • Video IM? Video Pastebin more like... (Score:5, Insightful)

    by jusdisgi ( 617863 ) on Wednesday October 25, 2006 @05:51PM (#16585188)
    Er...maybe I'm reading this wrong, but how the hell is this "video IM"? Instant messenging I think of as me and someone else simultaneously interacting....I type while he types, and we get each other's stuff in real time. This doesn't sound like that. This sounds like a pastebin; I upload my 60 secs and anybody can go look at it. Which I guess is ok....but it's certainly not as handy as actual IM functionality would be.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by jrumney ( 197329 )

      Yeah, its basically a YouTube ripoff with an MMS gateway tacked onto the front of it. Nothing Instant or Messaging about it.

  • i can email attached video from my phone. my wireless provider charges 5 cents/connect and as far as i can tell one email smtp connection is one connect, so i send video for a nickel. It goes up to http://glogger.eyetap.org/ [eyetap.org] which shares it. Just a project i'm hacking on for fun.
  • www.mywaves.com

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