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November 29, 2007

iDesktop.TV: A Better YouTube Interface?

Erick Schonfeld

29 comments »

idesktoptv.png

If you’ve ever been frustrated with how videos are organized on YouTube, check out UK-startup iDesktop.tv. It is just easier on the eyes. From TechCrunch UK:

iDesktop.tv - a relaunch of YouTubeDesktop - is basically an Ajax interface onto YouTube videos with a few more features added, chiefly the ability to download videos to your desktop. I know there are apps for this kind of thing, but few achieve this in the consumer-friendly fashion of iDesktop.tv. When you download a video, you can choose from a variety of formats to convert it to – AVI, MP4, 3GP, 3GP2, MOV, WMV, FLV, EXE or ZIP. That means you can then transfer the video easily to a PC or a mobile phone, iPhone or iPod without using any other converter program. Windows can be dragged around and resized and you can create playlists or share video links with friends. It’s also possible to dim the background while watching videos.

As Mike Butcher at TC UK points out, this is why it is important to put those ads right in the videos themselves. Who knows where people will end up watching them.

idesktoptv-screen.png

CrunchBase Information
iDesktop.tv
YouTube
Information provided by CrunchBase
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This entry was posted on Thursday, November 29th, 2007 at 9:31 am and is filed under Company & Product Profiles. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.

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  1. iDesktop.TV: A Better YouTube Interface?  »TechAddress

    November 29th, 2007 at 11:30 am

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  1. Mishell

    November 29th, 2007 at 9:39 am

    This comment not for this post.

    Dear Erick,

    It is possible to take an interest why you write about this project:
    http://www.techcrunch.com/2007.....for-video/
    and
    http://www.techcrunch.com/2007.....or-talent/

    Also ignore another similar startup:
    http://forums.techcrunch.com/f.....eadID=4873
    Sep 16, 2007

    ????

  2. Digital Life

    November 29th, 2007 at 9:49 am

    It looks great to me but it take ages to load …

  3. Paul

    November 29th, 2007 at 10:03 am

    Here is a Youtube player that also lets you view Digg.com at the same time.
    http://www.paulyanez.com/labs/.....mashup.php

  4. Mishell

    November 29th, 2007 at 10:06 am

    This comment not for this post.

    Dear Erick,

    It is possible to take an interest why you write about this project:
    whoashow.com and gotcast.com

    Also ignore another similar startup:
    http://forums.techcrunch.com/f…..eadID=4873
    Sep 16, 2007

    ????

  5. Anonymous Coward

    November 29th, 2007 at 10:17 am

    This clearly violates the YouTube TOS. You can’t create a competing interface to YouTube and you definitely cannot extract the Flash video into different formats.

  6. J.P.

    November 29th, 2007 at 10:24 am

    How they take out the youtube transparency on the video?

  7. Ginae

    November 29th, 2007 at 10:25 am

    The quality sure SEEMS better.

  8. adoption cost

    November 29th, 2007 at 10:30 am

    Easier? Looks like clutter to me.

  9. dedos

    November 29th, 2007 at 10:32 am

    I live it… how come none else has done something like this until now….

    Great site

  10. ZiZi

    November 29th, 2007 at 10:33 am

    amazing that youtube is letting this happened.
    whats more amazing is that a company would put their whole survival under another companys mercy.

  11. Tonto

    November 29th, 2007 at 10:37 am

    Eric,

    Why do you always use these question mark (?) headlines???

    This just in:

    “Do TechCrunch Writers Give Flawed Opinions?”

    Hey, it’s just a question….

  12. King Tut

    November 29th, 2007 at 10:39 am

    Funny how one company violates the T&C of another…so now the suck-ee steals from suck-er who is stealing from the source.

    How can YouTube get on iDesktop’s case? haha.

    Throwing stones in a glass house.

    And #9 = 100% correct (survival). This one has “Fail” written all over it. Have they gotten their $10m Silicon Valley funding yet?

  13. Zach Weisman

    November 29th, 2007 at 10:42 am

    This is where having an open API can bite you in the ass.

    I love when you see a third party force the hand of the original product by offering features on their alternative UI that have been deliberatly left out of the original product.

    If this site picks up traffic, will Youtube begin offer video downloads to reclaim lost traffic? Do people even care about downloading their Youtube videos?

  14. Jonathan

    November 29th, 2007 at 10:44 am

    I would think YouTube don’t give a rat’s arse. iDesktop.tv must get about 0.0000001% of the traffic that YouTube gets. iDesktop also just looks like some barstardised Windows Vista UI (complete with lame zoom level slider). In fact I don’t give a rat’s arse about it either, despite YouTube having the second worst UI on the web after eBay.

  15. AW

    November 29th, 2007 at 10:47 am

    They can keep it.

    This “organized content” is no better than YT, and, it lacks the social/community element… kinda like looking into YT through a one way mirror, but unable to join the crowd. This is a small step forward with a semi-decent player (though I found it buggy still), but a big step backward in services.

    Bad review.

  16. Dave

    November 29th, 2007 at 10:57 am

    I think there are sites that already offer similar things to this. The problem is with marketing them. People need to know a site exists before they can utilize the service associated with it. We’ll see if this catches hold.

  17. Nick

    November 29th, 2007 at 11:30 am

    none of the preview images are loading, just a lot of white boxes.

    in the browsers status bar it says waiting for http://img.youtube.com/… for a long time then gives up

  18. Nick

    November 29th, 2007 at 11:32 am

    this is a problem with my ISP or with YouTube as none of the preview images on YouTube’s main site are loading either.

  19. Scott

    November 29th, 2007 at 11:47 am

    This seems pretty neat but if it starts to take off at all won’t YT just do one themselves? Surely with all of their firepower they could have something like this up in a hurry. Does this violate YT TOS?

  20. Your Daddy

    November 29th, 2007 at 11:54 am

    The real news today is Exchange 2007 SP1 is out and the Sprint PPC 6800 has a new ROM 2.17 which finally makes the phone work!

  21. Great UI but scary

    November 29th, 2007 at 12:02 pm

    This product scares people.

  22. Lateefx

    November 29th, 2007 at 12:18 pm

    –
    Wow - This is fantastic! It’s so much more intuitive - though may cater to more technically advanced users — I feel that AJAX functions need to be slowly introduced to the public that doesn’t understand the potential in functionality.

    They need to hurry and add a Commenting feature to provide the full social web experience - this is crucial.

  23. Dot.Hakers

    November 29th, 2007 at 12:30 pm

    Could someone let these guys know that their site crashes the Opera browser?

  24. Steve Ballmer

    November 29th, 2007 at 12:41 pm

    Nice try! but ZuneSetTV has had this beat for some months now!

    http://fakesteveballmer.blogspot.com

  25. Steve

    November 29th, 2007 at 1:02 pm

    Clear violation of TOS - basically they’re capturing the progressive download direct from YouTube’s edge network. This is probably hard to detect because on that end it looks like an ordinary request.

  26. Marc

    November 29th, 2007 at 4:10 pm

    Any chance there is a Netvibes/Universal Widget that provides an Ajax-based YouTube interface/desktop?

    For those who might develop Widgets - http://dev.netvibes.com/

  27. Ben M

    November 29th, 2007 at 11:18 pm

    @25 What TOS? If they’re capturing the download direct it sounds like they’re bypassing the API. Does the googlebot accept my TOS when it hits my site? I have to use a robots.txt file. If someone hits a YT server and it serves up some content, that’s YT’s problem.

  28. Davendra

    December 5th, 2007 at 8:21 am

    Thanks for the all the comments. ALL suggestion taken onboard.

    Many thanks.

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