Interbine Blog

Easy installation of our browser button for Internet Explorer

2008-09-18T00:39:00.000-07:00

The Interbine button for IE is an easy way to get Internet video to your phone. You click on the button when you visit a video page on sites like YouTube & Metacafe and the video you're watching will be added to your Inbox channel automatically. It's very similar to our Firefox add-on.

Adding this link to the browser toolbar was always rather cumbersome because of the strange way it is done in IE, so we've built a tiny installer that does the annoying task for you. Check it out and tell us what you think!

(If you're using Firefox, you should get our Firefox add-on instead and if you're using Opera or Safari, you should get our Safari & Opera buttons.)

2008-08-13T12:16:00.001-07:00

It's been a long time since our previous post.

I guess it shows how busy we were with the thousands of new users that joined Interbine over the last couple of months. Thanks everybody for your support!

And now for today's quick tip:

Many of you have wondered if it is possible to review what videos are available for download and select only some of them before the sync starts.
In many cases this makes more sense than downloading all videos and then choosing what to keep and what to delete...

Unfortunately this feature is not available yet, but the good news is that we hope to release a version with that feature pretty soon.

Until it's ready, you can use a workaround to get part of this functionality by following the steps below. It's not as good as what you asked asked for, but it's something...

Open the web page of the channel you're interested in.
Click the "Unsubscribe" button if you only want specific items from that channel.
In the list of channel items you'll see a green '+' sign next to the description of each item. Select the item(s) you're interested in and click on the corresponding '+' sign. That specific item will be sent to your special Inbox channel and should be included in your next sync.
After you select an item, the '+' sign turns into '-' and if you click the '-' sign, the item will be removed from your inbox.

We know this solution is far from optimal and we're working on better ways to control the specific items that get pushed to your phone during the sync process.

Until then, Happy Synching everyone!

Over-the-air video delivery

2007-12-05T07:03:00.000-08:00

Getting media via Bluetooth is nice because it costs you nothing...

...but it's also less convenient - after all a mobile phone is, well, mobile...

Sometimes you're away from your PC and still want to get updates to your channels. Or perhaps you don't want to install our software on your PC, or maybe you use Linux or a Mac, like me, and the Interbine Desktop doesn't run on these operating systems yet.

Well, we're happy to announce that now you can choose the delivery method you prefer: Bluetooth or Over-the-air (OTA). If you decide to sync over-the-air you do not have to install anything on your PC and all the videos will get to your phone directly from our servers.

Over-the-air can mean several things, depending on your phone. It could be WiFi or Cellular - GPRS or 3G - and Interbine works with all of these methods.

If you haven't already joined our service you will be asked to choose the delivery method during the registration process. If you're already a member you can change your preference on your account page.

Please keep in mind, though, that over-the-air delivery may cost you money - depending on your data plan. The cost varies between carriers and countries. A fixed-rate plan or WiFi are the best options for over-the-air delivery.

Our phone application lets you specify a monthly download limit and after the limit is reached no more videos will be downloaded until next month.

Note also that from your account page you can specify the quality of videos that you wish to receive. Lower-quality videos are smaller in size, will download faster, and you will pay less to your carrier for the data transfer.

SeeYouLater Firefox Add-on

2007-12-05T06:32:00.000-08:00

Every day I bump into some videos I want to see but don't have the time - video is just too linear ;) I just want to put it on my phone and view it later when I have a few spare minutes.

That's why we've built the SeeYouLater Firefox add-on. This add-on makes it dead-simple to put videos on your phone, directly from the web browser.

Click on the See You Later button when you visit a video page on sites like YouTube and Metacafe and the video will be added to your Interbine Inbox channel automatically.

Also, when you visit a web page with direct links to video files, clicking the See You Later button will add a small icon next to the original link and if you click on the icon the video will be added to your inbox channel.

At the moment only Firefox is supported but we hope to release versions for other browsers at some point. Other video sites will also be supported pretty soon.

Please give it a try and tell us what you think.

Snacks and Meals

2007-02-22T23:08:00.000-08:00

Mark Cuban has an interesting post at Blog Maverick on the differences between online video and television. He compares the two as "snacks and meals", where online videos are similar to snacks and TV is more like full-blown meals. Not a perfect analogy, but not a bad one either.

How is it related to Interbine? Well, snacks are probably the best when you're on the road. Ever tried to have a meal while walking? Not much fun (I guess fast food deserves a category of its own).

Video snacks that can be "eaten" immediately and quickly can be quite tasty on mobile phones.
And if we take Mark's analogy further then having Interbine on your phone is somewhat similar to carrying some snacks with you and have something to eat is case you're hungry... Actually, it's even better - you don't even have to deal with filling up your bag when it gets empty.

Media Hot Folders

2006-11-25T01:27:00.000-08:00

You can now specify an Interbine hot folder on your computer - whenever you drop a new media file to that folder it will be automatically transferred to the phone on the next sync.
You don't have to delete the file from your computer - Interbine keeps track of the files it has already sent to the phone. You can think of this folder as your private RSS feed.

This feature opens up some interesting possibilities:

You can point the hot folder to the "Incoming" folder of your favorite P2P program - whatever you download from your peers will get to your phone without your intervention (just leave Interbine running in addition to your P2P program)
Whenever you get some cool new media from someone, say via email, simply drop it into the hot folder and it will be put on your phone
Download files from web sites ("Save as...") directly to the hot folder. Think of this as a "Save to my phone" menu.

If you come up with other good uses of hot folders let us know.

Media Mobilizer

2006-08-11T15:01:00.000-07:00

We've release the Media Mobilizer.

It's a little bookmarklet that allows you to easily transfer media files from many web sites to your mobile phone. You can use it whenever your visit a page with media links. When you press the Media Mobilizer button, a small icon will show up next to any link to a media file that we support and by clicking that icon the media will be added to your inbox channel and will be transferred to your phone on the next sync. It also works for RSS feeds - clicking on the icon will add the feed to the Interbine directory.

A few notes: at the moment the Media Mobilizer only works with Firefox, but we hope to release an Internet Explorer version pretty soon. Note also that the Media Mobilizer does not work (yet) with streaming media - only direct links to media files. If you want to send media from streaming media sites like YouTube, Google Video, Dailymotion, etc. you can use Interbine's support for the media feeds that these sites provide, as we've mentioned in the past.

Visit, for example, the following Internet Archive movie page and click the Mobilizer button you've just created...

The Mobilizer was inspired by the cool Playtagger

YouTube Feeds

2006-08-09T03:09:00.000-07:00

It is now easier than ever to mobilize the content from your favorite YouTube tag or user.

All you have to do is click the Add YouTube feed link in the side bar, select the type of feed you want to create, enter the YouTube tag (e.g. Amazing) or user name (e.g. youtube), and you're done.

We will put this YouTube content on your phone as part of the normal synch process.

Note that the Top Rated, Recently Added and other global YouTube feeds are already available as channels in Interbine under the category Collections/YouTube

Sharing with your friends

2006-07-16T14:29:00.000-07:00

Now, when you bump into a clip you like on your phone and want your friends to see it too, you can share it with them via Interbine.

If you choose the 'My Friends' option under your account, you'll be taken to a web page where you can manage your contacts. You can search for your friends on Interbine and add them to the list of you contacts. Your contact list will be made available to you on your phone. Next time you see a cool clip on your phone you will be able select "Share Clip" from the menu and specify a friend or a list of friends that you want to share it with. You can even add a short message that will be attached to the clip when your friend(s) get it.

As always, this type of Asynchronous Multimedia Messaging will cost you nothing.

Taking your Yahoo Podcasting Subscriptions wherever you go

2006-05-22T00:07:00.000-07:00

We've mentioned Personal Feeds in a previous post - here's an example of one cool use of these feeds.

You may have heard of Yahoo's Podcasting site. It's still in beta, but it already provides a rich directory of podcasts - both audio and video. The subscription is free and you get a feature-rich site for to listening and watching podcasts on your computer.

You can browse Yahoo's podcasts directory and subscribe to feeds that interest you. Note that many of the feeds in the directory are video podcasts.
If you open the "My Subscriptions" page, you'll find at the bottom of the page the icon. This is a link to your Yahoo personal channel - a channel that contains the latest episodes from all your subscriptions.

Right click on the icon, copy the address and paste the address into the URL box in the Interbine personal feed page. Starting from your next sync, you have your Yahoo Podcasts subscriptions on to your phone where every you go, free of charge!

Personal feeds

2006-05-21T23:48:00.000-07:00

We've added support for personal feeds some time ago.
This feature is quite powerful and we thought we should say a few words about it.

Personal feeds allow you to add whatever feed you want to your subscription list - even if they are not listed in our directory. So, if you bump into a site with videos that you like and the site provides access to the videos via RSS or iTunes or Yahoo podcasting or whatever, you can simply add it to the list of your personal feeds and we will get it to your phone together with the rest of your content.

If you are using some other software to watch video feeds on your desktop, it might be a good idea to import some of them (perhaps those you like most) into Interbine and then you can have access to them while you're away from your computer - after all, you have the phone with you most of the day.

As an illustration of the power of this features lets add a personal feed from one of Dailymotion's video channels. Go to Dailymotion and pick a channel you like (for example, Dailymotion's fun channel ). On the upper right part of the Dailymotion's channel page you'll find an icon. Right click on it and copy the link's URL. Now open the "Add Personal Feed" page on Interbine's site, paste the URL in the text box and click submit. Voila, from now on you'll have videos from this channel delivered to your phone on a regular basis as part of your daily sync.

RSS feeds have become a standard mechanism by which content providers and aggregators - professional and amateur - publish their content on the Internet. Interbine mobilizes this content for you on your mobile phone. The number of potential uses of this are limited only by your imagination. Here are a few links to get you start playing:

YouTube RSS feeds
Dailymotion channels, tags and groups.
VideoBomb RSS feeds (front page, tags, incoming)
Mefeedia - if you're into Videoblogs you find many blogs in this directory

P.S. If you find a really good channel, it would be great if you could add it to the Interbine directory so that we can all enjoy it...

Yahoo Search Feeds

2006-04-18T14:34:00.000-07:00

The Interbine service now supports Yahoo video search feeds.

Suppose you want to create a channel of Harry Potter clips for your phone.

All you have to do is click on the Add search feed link on the sidebar and fill in the search terms on the following page and you're done.

On your next sync, you should be able to see video from your newly created channel on your phone...

We think that search feeds are a great way to load your phones with videos that interest you - videos from all over the Internet, based on a simple list of keywords.

Welcome

2006-04-04T01:55:00.000-07:00

Welcome to the Interbine blog!

This blog is about the Interbine service. You'll find here discussions of new features, ideas for using the service, issues with the site and our services in general.
You can subscribe to our RSS feed for updates, workarounds, and other items of interest.

Thanks for your support.