admin |
September 29th, 2008 |
We are glad to announce today we have finally plugged in the new servers we promised since last week, which now doubles our capacity for storage and video conversion.
We are well aware of the troubles some of you could have experienced over the last 2 weeks, and would like to apologize to all of you if some of your videos files taken a lot more time than usual to convert.
Since we opened public beta, we have seen an important increase in the number of media files uploaded to Wixi storage & conversion platform, and it sometimes had difficulties copping with the additional traffic, which caused delay for converting the biggest video files (above 700MB usually).
To handle this situation until we now, we had to give priority to small files so most of you would not notice the troubles and could benefit from the best QoS for your photos, videos & music files.
Now, any file, no matter his size, will be converted at the speed of light, which means a few minutes at maximum 
)
Thank you to all once again for your patience and enjoy uploading your files to Wixi!
Seb
Wixi Blog Admin
Today, 5th September 2008, the whole Wixi Team is glad to announce the launch of Wixi service in Public Beta!
The Web site, which has been in private Beta for twelve months, is now ready to reach the masses and to offer to anyone the ability to build an online media center that they can access any time, anywhere, and from any device without installing any application.
“Wixi has seen a tremendous amount of growth during our private beta phase,” says Arthur Madrid, CEO of Wixi, Inc. “The main feedback we’ve received from our users is that Wixi offers a unique experience combining an online media storage service with a social network. People say they use their Wixi as an iTunes online. We now look forward to bringing our service to the masses and to our next levels of success.”
Since the network’s launch at TechCrunch40 in September 2007, Wixi has grown to a membership of more than 200,000 Beta testers worldwide, hosting more than 1,000,000 files. Wixi continues to expand its offerings daily, improving upon its user interface and features to manage thousands of media “in the cloud.”
Among the features added since its launch:
• New design make the navigation easier to manage large amount of personal files/folders inside the Wixi online desktop.
• YouTube channel & Bookmarklet: to add any YouTube video directly to Wixi
• Restrictions rules: to only add media inside the Wixi network when users are friends.
• iPhone version on http://iphone.wixi.com (15,000 streams per day)
• New Wixi universal player that offers Web semantic suggestions for media playing.
Web users who register within 1 month of the launch will enjoy the benefits of unlimited file storage for free. Beginning in October, new members will enjoy 3 GB of media storage on the network for free, or opt for Wixi’s premium service, which will allow unlimited file storage for $4.99 per month and $50 per year.
Today, we have rolled out an important update to Wixi! It includes several new features, the main one being the integration of YouTube into the desktop and a bunch of bug fixes, to make the service even more comfortable and intuitive to use.
Let’s review the most noticeable changes one by one:
- YouTube player integration: we have made Wixi framework capable of playing media files and embedding Flash players from other contents providers as Wixi. The first service which we have integrated being YouTube and its world famous Flash video player:
We of course are planning to add several other sources, so you can centralize all your media files on Wixi, even though they are hosted on other service providers! - YouTube Bookmarklet: no need to upload your own video files, or capture .flv videos to reupload them, you can now add your favorite YouTube videos onto your Wixi account, and play them inside your Wixi desktop.
How? Simply click on the YouTube button in the topbar, and follow the instructions to install our bookmarklet tool.
Then, while watching videos on YouTube.com, click on the bookmarklet button and voilà!
The video is added to your wixi account. - YouTube search: you can now search contents on your Wixi desktop, on the public Wixi network and from YouTube. Results will appear like normal results, and by clicking on ‘Add to my Wixi’, the video will be added to your desktop, ready to play!
- YouTube channels: are you lacking inspiration for videos to watch? You know there are hundreds of cool videos on Internet, but don’t know where to start looking for them?
Then, follow the guide! We have added a new button in the topbar: “YouTube”. When you click onto it, it will show you this window:
These are the “YouTube channels”, which show you the best videos available on YouTube, sorted by period and with multiple criteria: most rated, most viewed, most discussed…
Check the preview & description and add in a single click the ones you like to your Wixi Desktop to play them! - upload your documents with the Flash uploader: store online your .DOC, .XLS, .PPT and .PDF documents onto your Wixi account, and download them from anywhere whenever you need them! Your documents are automatically put as private, so only you will be able to access them.
- new ‘Pending Friends’ tab in the dashboard: access directly all your friendships requests through this tab, for easier and faster friends management.
New friendships requests will also appear automatically in the tab, without needing you to refresh your browser page. - compatibility with Firefox 3.0: since the ‘Download Day’ of Firefox 3.0, we have organized a Bug fixing marathon to make Wixi fully compatible with FF3. The results? Wixi runs amazingly faster with FF3!
- rewritten back-end using ‘Events’: with this system, the Wixi desktop gets even more dynamic, and is able to refresh all elements (storage bar, new messages, new friendships requests, uploaded files status…) without you having to refresh your browser. This ‘event’ system is also the ground work for next exciting incoming features, such as “Who’s online”, “Chat” … applications.
- a lot of optimizations and bug fixing, like usually
We will keep developing new features and integrating other Web 2.0 services, to make one (or several ) step towards turning Wixi into THE media-centric online desktop and backup storage service that you need!
Seb
Wixi Blog Admin
As the iPhone 3G model has been released in the latest days, we would like to remind you all that you can enjoy access all your media files on the go, through:
You can either browse http://iphone.wixi.com/username (replace username by your Wixi username), or discover all the great contents available on the public network (approximatively 500,000 media files optimized for iPhone playback)!
Thanks to 3G network, your media: videos and music, will load faster and with a guaranteed smooth playback. Say ‘bye bye!’ to buffering times, truly access your media files when & where you want, in the palm of your hand!
Try it, you will love it!
We have put online today an update of the Wixi Universal Flash Player, which includes a series of improvements and corrections to maximize your multimedia experience on Wixi. It will make the player more stable, and is taking into account several feedbacks we received from our beta users.
Here is a list of all the changes related to this update:
Merged the 3 « More (videos, photos, music) » buttons into 1 button, for less confusing, direct access to contents suggestion on the web - New display mode of images in Fullscreen : they are not upscaled anymore, but shown in 1 :1 ratio for best rendering of your photos in your slideshows
- Faster loading speed and transitions from one media to another
- Fixed the « ghost » image bug that appeared on images playlist on embedded mode
- Fixed a minor display issue causing the More layers to show out of screen
Our team is already working on the next version of the Wixi Universal Player, which will very likely introduce new features, so stay tuned !
Seb
Wixi Blog Admin
