Share on OVI Blog - Media Sharing: Photos, Video, Audio & More

Pangea Day 2008 and Share on Ovi

Share on Ovi makes sharing media part of everyday life. It has been our goal since day one to bring the people of the world together to share their experiences through rich media. Our recent partnership with Pangea Day supports that goal by promoting tolerance, compassion, and unity among cultures all over the world through the power of film.

In a world where people are often divided by borders, difference, and conflict, it's easy to lose sight of what we all have in common. Pangea Day seeks to overcome that - to help people see themselves in others.

Share on Ovi is hosting the 2008 Nokia Mobile Filmmaking Contest as part of Pangea Day. Existing and new Share on Ovi members are invited to participate in the contest by uploading short videos to the Pangeaday.film channel. All Share on Ovi members have the ability to vote for their favorite inspirational film. (See contest terms and conditions)

How you can participate:

View and rate the contest entries at http://share.ovi.com/channel/pangeaday.film

Submit your own film for the contest by April 30, 2008

1. Create a video up to 2 minutes in length
2. Add at least one tag from Pangea Day list
3. Add the location where your film took place
4. Upload your film to the Pangea Day Film channel.

Thank you for using Share on Ovi for your personal media sharing needs.

Great New Features!

The Share team at Ovi is working hard to bring you the features you want and remove limitations to how you can use and enjoy Share on Ovi.  Here are some of the most recent changes.

Unlimited Bandwith & Unlimited Storage!
Have a lot of media to upload and share with your friends and family?  Tired of hitting your limit on bandwidth with pictures still in the camera?  Share on Ovi now offers free unlimited uploads, storage, and viewing.  Yes – free.  Yes – unlimited.  No – strings.

Mobile Video
You can now view your favorite videos on your mobile device by visiting share.ovi.com/mobile.  New 3GP transcoding means that your video collection on Share on Ovi is now compatible with most web-enabled mobile devices.  Now you can shoot, upload, and view video all from the comfort of wherever you are.  No PC required!

Share your location with Google Maps
Add location information to your media with geo-tags.  Geo-tagging lets you show the world where in the world you are, and lets you find other media and members by location.  Putting your media in the context of where it was produced adds to your story and helps others appreciate you and your media even more.

You can add geo-tags when you upload your media, or you can add tags to media that’s already on Share on Ovi by using the Edit Media action. 

We're now Share on Ovi!

We’re baaack!
 
You may have been wondering what in the world we’ve been up to during the last six months since Twango was acquired by Nokia. Frankly, so have we!  Our heads are still spinning from all the changes.  Going from our little basement startup to being a part of a large global company like Nokia has been a real adventure. We’ve grown the team, made some big changes to the service and made a lot of new friends along the way.
 
First, we are now part of Nokia’s new service brand, “Ovi”.  As of Today, the Twango brand will be a fond memory.  We are now Share on Ovi.  As you can see from looking at the site, we’ve moved to a new look and feel that you will see among all the Ovi services as they roll out.  We’ve also streamlined the user interface with simpler navigation, better search options, new ways to explore and an improved help system.
 
Under the covers, we’ve made huge improvements to the service infrastructure, which will allow us to scale to millions of users.  You may not notice these improvements right away, but you’ll experience better performance that doesn’t degrade as more and more people start using the system.
 
And finally, we’ve also spent a lot of time building software that allows Nokia devices to connect to the service.  “Share Online” is a cool application for your Nokia mobile device that allows you to capture photos and videos and upload them to the service directly!  It also allows you to view feeds of media from your contacts and people that are sharing from you, so you can keep in touch with your friends better than ever.  We’ll provide a download link for this software on the Share homepage in the next few days.
 
What you’re seeing today is just a first step on the way to the bold Internet services vision that we at Nokia all share.  More services are on the way, and we will continue to improve the Share service with more great features and better integration with other Nokia services and devices.  We’d love to hear what you think.

We'd love to hear your opinion, so please post your feedback.  We’ll be watching!

--Jim Laurel
Director, Service Development - Nokia

Automated copyright protection

Sharing personal content is at the core of what Twango is all about. From inception, Twango has been focused on our members' sharing needs. We respect the copyrights of amateurs and professionals that post content on the service. One way we can continue to keep the community focused on real media from real people is to make sure copyrighted material is not uploaded without the consent of the owner. Over the next few days we will be implementing an automated system which will identify and remove copyrighted commercial content. You may notice some existing content will no longer be available. Accounts affected will receive an explanatory note in their inbox. This automated system will remain in place to identify copyrighted media and notify members if their uploads are affected. This process will take place in parallel to the upload to ensure upload speeds will not be impacted.

Thanks again for using Twango for your personal media sharing needs.

Videos are playing in-place again

We're happy to report that newly uploaded videos are once again being transcoded for in-place playback on Twango. And thanks to our clever engineers, you're going to notice a significant improvement in the quality of the video playback.

All of the past videos are being re-transcoded at this new higher quality level, and with a few exceptions, should be online and ready to play within a few days. So no need to reload your old videos again - they'll be ready to play in-place soon if they aren't already.

Nokia has acquired Twango

This is an exciting moment for Twango. When we started Twango back in 2004, we set out to create a media-sharing service that would embrace and build connections between people. We wanted to make it easy for people to share the media they choose (photos, videos, audio, documents, and more) in whatever way they choose. So it was thrilling to learn that a company of Nokia’s global stature and resources shared that vision. Together we will be able to deliver more quickly on our shared vision to enable people to capture and enjoy their personal media anywhere, at anytime, from any connected device, in any way that you choose.

And a sincere “thank you” to the many loyal Twango members around the world who pushed us to improve the service and helped build our member base by sharing their own great media. As Twango joins the Nokia family our service will continue to operate without any major interruptions, although there will be some minor changes to our service and policies which we detail in this FAQ.

Press release: Nokia acquires Twango to offer a comprehensive media sharing experience

Twango media on location with Google Earth

Now you can browse and discover Twango media and members geographically. Surf the globe and see Twango photos, videos, and audio on the other side of the earth or in your own backyard. Any geo-tagged item on Twango (e.g. any item with a location value applied) can appear on Google Earth. So remember, apply location tags to your media pages so that you and others can see them on Google Earth.

To view Twango media on Google Earth:

• Install Google Earth (it's free), then:
• View geo-tagged media from the Twango community:
  Click one of these links: most popular media, most popular members (approx location), most recent media, most recent photos, most recent videos, most recent audio
• View geo-tagged media from a particular channel:
  Go to the channel page, click the Subscribe button, then click the icon on the popup.


• View all geo-tagged media from a particular member:
  Go to the member's profile page and click the "view in Google Earth" link near the top.

Clicking the links in the instructions above establishes a KML feed between Twango and Google Earth. The feed automatically keeps Google Earth up to date with the latest geo-tagged items from the particular Twango feeds you've established.

Twango - Easy Media Sharing For Everyone

by Phil Butler

"The latest upgrade to Twango has infinitely simplified the homepage and users can now literally share media anywhere even if they are not members. That's right; visitors can now have the utility of Twango without even signing up. Members have extra flexibility of course, but anyone can now embed their videos with just a click from the new homepage via the free links provided."

"Twango is a really nice service that continues to adapt to the needs of its users and now people in general. Sometimes the nicest things come in the simplest packages and Twango gave everyone a nice gift of simplicity in an ever complex maze of services and signups. I like this service very much and it saves a bunch of time if you are writing a post and need to show your readers a video or some photos."

"It is amazing how innovations evolve sometimes. Twango was never a really complicated service, but so many sites approach things from different angles, it is refreshing to see simple get even more so."

Twango - An Excellent File Hosting Service Inspired by YouTube

by Amit Agarwal

"Why another file hosting service when we already have established players like Rapidshare, YouSendit, YouTube, Scribd or Flickr ? First, Twango lets you upload, manage your documents and media files from one central location. And it makes it extremely easy for your audience to view, embed or subscribe to your content."

"Twango is like a breath of fresh air and provides one common platform for sharing virtually all file formats. Whether it's music, videos, images or documents - just do the "twango".

New One-Click File Hosting and Sharing for Nonmembers

Now even nonmembers can upload and share media using Twango. Our newly simplified homepage for nonmembers lets you quickly upload a photo, video, or any number of other files with a single click.

Twango hosts the file and gives you links to embed in your blog or share via email or IM. Of course, if you sign up for a free membership, you can upload larger files, organize those files, get more embedding options, and participate in Twango's activity media sharing community.

Give it a shot - let us know what you think!