Online video service Kyte has just announced that they will be terminating their free service as of August 31, 2011. The email I received includes the following explanation on why they are discontinuing the free service, “After launching in 2007 with mobile “life streaming” media sharing apps for consumers and participating in the explosion of online and mobile video, it has been a good run.  Now that we are totally focused on our professional offering, we can no longer maintain the free service.”

You can check out our CenterNetworks Kyte channel – I haven’t used it in years but did use it pretty heavily for the 2008 Techcrunch and Demo events for startup demos and the famous “schwag bag” videos (in case you are wondering, Techcrunch had the better bag).

Here are the instructions to download your media from Kyte — you need to do this by August 29:

• Log into kyte.tv.
• The “My Kyte” section will display a list of your channels on the right.
• Under channel name click Manage Channel.
• The Manage Channel page will display.
• Click Media Download URL.
• A new tab/page will launch with a list of all shows and media on the channel.
• For each show, right click the Download link and click Save Link As.
• If you have multiple channels, go back to the My Kyte tab/page and follow the above steps for each channel.

Kyte has setup a FAQ about the free service discontinuation.

Find more stories about: Kyte, online video, social video

Here’s some startup news from across the Web:

Online video hosting service Kyte has announced the opening of two new offices, one in Central London and the other in Hamburg, Germany. From the announcement, Richard Cohen will lead the London office and Maks Giordano will lead the German expansion. The offices were setup to handle the current Kyte clients in each location but will also house sales teams to expand local operations.

As a side note, whatever happened to mobile live video? It seemed to be all the rage last year but the past few months I haven’t really heard much about the various companies in the space.

ClickTale is announcing today the launch of their Mouse Move Heatmap service. From the launch announcement, “By aggregating the mouse movements of hundreds visitors on a site, we create a comprehensive, visual representation of what visitors are looking at and focusing on within the page.” The mouse move heatmaps are available on all plans although limited on the free plan.

This week’s events in NYC:

• NYC Web Design Meetup
• Web2NewYork

Find more stories about: ClickTale, Kyte, startups

Online video hosting service Kyte has announced a suite of new video player options this evening. The new options (as seen below) allow Kyte publisher to completely change the look and interactivity of the Kyte video player.

You are now able to completely remove the header or brand it as you like. I think the branding used to be part of a "premium" feature but it appears now it is available to everyone. The branding option is great because when your video player is embedded on other sites, the branding goes with it. This makes for a stronger brand presence than what YouTube provides.

Another new option is to remove the chat function. I’d go a step further and make the player remove the chat if there has been no chat activity in x days. This will keep the chat available when active and remove it once it gets a bit stale.

Lastly, you can control how the player controls are viewed. They can be hidden and will only appear when the viewer mouses over the window.

I like this new set of usability and design enhancements Kyte has launched today. It should make the player fit better in a wider variety of websites and blogs. 

Find more stories about: Kyte, online video, Quick News

When I interviewed Kyte CMO Gannon Hall last month, he described Kyte as, "a universal media platform." Today Kyte has announced several updates to their media platform. The most notable update is the launch of advertising within the content stream. Two types of video ads are available on Kyte. The first is an overlay ad that covers 1/3 of the window and the other is an ad display during media uploads. The media upload ad would remain in place as long as it takes to upload the media – providing a strong point for messaging.

Kristen notes that these new ad products will work well with the upcoming launch of an internal ad server which will allow companies the ability to run their own ads.

Other updates include a clickable logo which allows for in-video branding, the ability to switch video channels within the player and server enhancements to make the Kyte player more responsive. 

Here’s an example of Kyte’s video ad product on the left and the ability to show an ad during uploads on the right:

Find more stories about: advertising, Kyte, online advertising, online video, Quick News, videos

Earlier this week I wrote about my thoughts on selecting the right online video partners for CN. In the post I noted that I left out "live" video players including Kyte, Qik and Flixwagon. The next day I received an email from one of the execs at Kyte who wanted to chat with me about what Kyte has to offer and their placement within my post. This afternoon I spoke for well over an hour with Gannon Hall, Kyte CMO to find out what’s new at Kyte.

Gannon explained that the best way to think of Kyte is as, "a universal media platform." While they provide live video streaming with some Nokia phones, it’s just one piece of their platform. Kyte can do video uploads, live streaming video, webcam video, etc. We looked at the client they speak about most, 50cent. At the time we viewed his community site, there were 952 people actively watching a video in his Kyte channel. This is not people viewing the player, Gannon says this is active engagement. As of the time of writing this post, it was down to 888 – simply amazing.

I asked Gannon who he would consider their biggest competitor. He said Brightcove and that they are winning deals away from Brightcove. He said they are like a "Brightcove 2.0" as they have many social media tools including a strong Facebook player and can do multimedia chat.

They are working with a variety of consumer and b2b brands and will announce more partnerships soon. The real strength of using Kyte is that your fans can pick up your Kyte channel and place it on their page, blog, or social network. When they embed the Kyte player, it retains your branding. This is certainly more powerful than a simple YouTube embed and the Kyte channel is always updated with your latest videos. From my perspective the embed and "channel" concepts are the real strength of what the Kyte platform offers.

I asked Gannon his thoughts about the notion of paying video talent for using Kyte or any other video platform. He said they have never done it and never will. They don’t need to he added.

As I add a video channel to the new CenterNetworks, Kyte could play a role in the strategy. I still don’t see us using it for the executive interviews or the funny videos, but for event coverage, it could be the perfect fit. The ability to feed into a channel is key for that type of video. It allows for easy posting and viewing without the need to create multiple content posts.

Check out my video interview with Kyte co-founder Daniel Graf at SXSW and 10 Great and Fun Mobile Video and Photo Apps.

Find more stories about: Interviews, Kyte, mobile, online video

Mobile photo and video are game changers for individuals and news organizations. As more mobile devices (and carriers) are supported, this market is going to skyrocket. Here are 10 apps that are in the mobile photo and video space. Some are well known and some might be new to you, in any event, give them all a try! And as always add your own faves in the comments.

Flixwagon

The Flixwagon app allows you to stream video live online. Their player is the best currently and Flixwagon recently worked with MTV on their Choose or Lose campaign by having reporters all over the country streaming in live video using a mobile handset. Currently Flixwagon works mainly with Nokia handsets but also has some support via a Java client. Flixwagon is also partnering with a variety of conferences to get live streaming from conference attendees. They most recently had many mobile devices at SXSW. (our Flixwagon coverage)

Qik

Qik (pronounced Quick) is probably the most buzzed live video app currently on the market. Videoblogger Robert Scoble and SEO Jason Calacanis are heavy users of the app. If you have a Nokia mobile that is supported, you can stream live video onto the Web using the Qik app. Created videos are also stored for later viewing. Justin.tv is a Qik partner. (our Qik coverage)

Kyte

Why do I like Kyte? Simple, it works with my mobile. I can shoot a video, and then email it into Kyte and it appears in moments. When I upload the same video to YouTube it always gives me an error. While on my device it’s not live, it’s as close to live as possible. There is a live version of the app as well, again for Nokia devices. Kyte can also create shows based on photos as well. Nokia is actually an investor in Kyte. (our Kyte coverage)

JuiceCaster

JuiceCaster allows you to easily upload videos and pictures from your mobile to your JuiceCaster account along with a player for your blog and embed options into Facebook and MySpace. Most of the video I checked out was very, very grainy (a dog looked like a sheep) but the photos look better. JuiceCaster also allows you watch videos on your mobile.

Movino

Movino can help you setup live mobile video streaming onto your blog or Web site. It appears to support 3G and WiFi and a variety of handsets. If you use the Java client, there is no sound. What makes Movino different is that it’s all open source so you can grab the code and edit where needed. Movino was originally developed as a course project at Abo Akademi University. The developers note that the course has completed and future development may be limited.

mywaves

mywaves is a video content site. You can select from thousands of videos and send them directly to your mobile for later viewing. You can setup an auto channel which will send the videos to your mobile when they match your criteria. In their gallery it seems most people want videos sent to them of women in bikinis and lingerie.

GoTV

Want to watch TV on your mobile? GoTV offers about 10 channels of a variety of TV genres. The company is based in California and most of the content is originally produced.

ITookThisOnMyPhone

This service with the very long name lets you create online photo galleries based on the pictures you take on your mobile. Using the ITookThisOnMyPhone app, images are automatically uploaded to the site and after permissions are applied, the images are available for viewing. The service currently works on Blackberry and Windows Mobile.

Phoja

Phoja helps you find answers to your questions using photos. If you take a photo of something that you need help identifying (say a shirt someone is wearing, you want to know the designer), the Phoja community will help identify the product in the photo. They define the service as a “social photo discussion” and there’s a Digg ratings model which pushes popular photos to the frontpage.

Radar

You take a photo, upload it to Radar, it’s sent immediately to your friends and family and they can comment on it and the comments are sent back to you. It looks like photos are sent to your friends computers not their mobile devices. They have also partnered with Big Brother so you can watch video from inside the Big Brother house.

Find more stories about: Flixwagon, Kyte, mobile, MyWaves, photos, Qik, Radar, Reviews, Video

Today is BarCampNYC in Brooklyn and I will be attempting to do some live interviews and coverage during the day. If you are at the event and would like to contribute your videos to the kyte channel below, send me an email for the instructions. Until I actually make it to the location, the player below will be blank. First videos should be live by 11:30AM Eastern. I can’t guarantee this works as it is our first time using Kyte for this purpose, but we will give it ye olde college try. I will update this post during the day with video updates.

Find more stories about: BarCamp, Conferences, Kyte

After my post about Kyte yesterday, the team asked me to swing by their booth. Let me just say that what they showed me was impressive. They showed me their 2-minute full Facebook application along with the one-minute embed option. The system works with mobile phones, webcams, and saved videos. We were able to take my mobile phone, create a video, email it to Kyte and it was online immediately in my channel. The live features work mainly with the Nokia N95 (Nokia is an investor in Kyte).

With all of the new live video services hitting the airwaves recently, I asked co-founder Daniel Graf about the differences between Kyte and Seesmic, Qik and Flixwagon. Here’s his video response:

Find more stories about: Conferences, Flixwagon, Kyte, Qik, Seesmic, sxsw

Last year the company who got the lcd panels throughout the SXSW festival was Twitter. Most believe that this event made Twitter. This year Kyte (our coverage) has the panels. Friday and Saturday seemed to be going well, today not so much.

Here’s what the screens look like today:

While the Windows errors aren’t Kyte’s issue, it certainly doesn’t allow the company to show off their technology that I am guessing they paid a pretty penny for.

Find more stories about: Kyte, sxsw, Twitter

Robert Scoble has the exclusive on a new round of funding for Kyte.tv. This B round is $15 million added to their A round of $2.25 million. Robert notes the following players in the round: Telefonica (led round), Nokia, DoCoMo, Swisscom, Holtzbrinck and DFJ.

The Kyte.tv people say that Kyte is the "easiest at production and distribution." Kyte.tv has also signed 50 Cent to a "celebrity channel" – and apparently is adding more celebrity channels soon. I guess if you can’t get General Wesley Clark like Ustream did yesterday, 50 Cent is a good 2nd place substitute.

The little bit I’ve used Kyte it worked well but there really is no community there compared to Viddler and some of the other video plays. But with Scoble on board, look for them to continue to grow in the space.

Here’s the video of the announcement:

Find more stories about: Kyte, online video, Quick News, Venture Capital, Video