Business Report has launched the South African Startup Index (SASI), which they describe as “a regularly updated index of the most innovative and highest-potential South Africa companies. The index has been created in association with startup tracker YouNoodle. The scores and rankings are based on a sophisticated algorithm using information pulled in from thousands of online sources about early stage companies: traffic, mainstream media, funding information sources, the blogosphere, and other key factors.”

Zoopy ranks quite nicely in the Top 30 (we’re number 5 as at 1pm on 16 November 2009) and the list is a great way to see what’s happening in the SA startup environment, all in one place.

Upwards and onwards!

As the world moves closer towards delivering content on any screen at any time, TV channels, radio stations, online and mobile publishers, media owners and content creators are evolving into new ways of thinking where formats and access are multi-faceted considerations. The bottom line is this: more content choices with more ways to find what I want, where I want it, delivered in any of the ways I choose, whenever I choose.

This will be looked at within an African context at the Africa Media and Broadcasting Congress 2009 in Sandton on 3-5 November 2009. We’ll be there, so give us a shout if you’re attending and want to meet up.

Here’s a quick overview of the conference, in their own words:

Africa is undergoing a multimedia revolution. Increases in capacity due to satellite and fibre projects have also resulted in increases in the uptake of mobile TV and video streaming.

- What will this mean for Africa’s media and broadcasting future?
- How will this affect the business model of Africa’s broadcasters?
- And how will broadcasters, media and content providers ensure success in 2009 in this competitive and dynamic landscape?

We’ve got some exciting news. Exciting for us, our existing users and the many new users who are still about to discover Zoopy.

Over to the official press release for the juicy bits:

South African media sharing site Zoopy.com has entered into an international partnership deal with leading online video distribution and analytics service, TubeMogul. Zoopy is the first African company to partner with the Silicon Valley company, alongside media heavyweights such as YouTube, Microsoft, and MySpace.

Brett Wilson, CEO and founder of TubeMogul, comments: “Zoopy provides advertisers and content creators a unique opportunity to reach the African continent, which is obviously exciting.”

Some coverage of the news out there:

• Distribution tracking added for Zoopy, Africa’s most popular video site - TubeMogul Blog
• Zoopy goes global - ITWeb
• Zoopy signs international deal - MyBroadband
• Zoopy inks international deal with TubeMogul - Bandwidth Blog
• Zoopy partners up with international TubeMogul - TechMasai

More

• My Digital Life
• Yudi Rambaran

Zoopy’s new Java application makes it even easier for you to share your videos, photos and audio clips from your mobile phone. The J2ME application, which is about 260KB in size, gives you access to your Zoopy profile on the move, allowing you to upload your own media, search other members’ media and browse the latest Zoopy TV episodes.

To download the app, you can do one of the following:

• Point your phone’s browser to http://m.zoopy.com/app.
• SMS mobile to 39626. You will be sent a link to a page on Zoopy’s mobi site, where you can download the application. There is a once-off charge of 50c for the SMS to be sent to you.

We’ve made the application super simple to use, with a fresh and friendly interface for you to enjoy anywhere, anytime:

As always, your feedback will help us improve the application. If you have any at all, please send an email to mobilefeedback@zoopy.com. As we continue to improve the application and release updates, your installation will ask if you’d like to upgrade to the latest version, and will assist you in doing so.

As we’ve grown and moulded Zoopy over the last two years, your constant feedback has helped us make more informed decisions about the environment you see and use when visiting Zoopy.

We’ve had loads of feedback regarding one of the media types at Zoopy and, after looking at this from all angles, we’ve decided to make a change to Zoopy that we’d like you to know about. If you’ve written a note at Zoopy before, you would have already heard from us about this over the last couple of weeks.

Until now you’ve been able to add media to your Zoopy profile in four ways: by uploading videos, photos and audio clips - or writing notes. If we look back at the purpose of notes, these were meant to be a way to add context to your other media. So for example, a holiday to Singapore may include a note about the trip as a whole, giving background and details on the 14 videos and 90 photos you uploaded from the holiday. In reality, almost all of our users are doing this via the descriptions that appear underneath their videos, photos and audio clips anyway, with the fourth media type not really being used for this purpose.

What has happened, if we look at the popularity of notes (both in creating them and viewing them), is that notes have become an easy way to add spam to the Zoopy community. Notes are also the only media type that couldn’t be embedded, whereas videos, photos and audio have constantly given action to the idea of media sharing that Zoopy is all about, by users embedding the other three media types in their blogs, on news sites, on corporate pages and brand micro sites.

Taking this all into account, we’ve decided to remove notes as a media type on Zoopy. If you’ve never used notes on Zoopy before, this won’t affect you at all. And if you were a fan of notes, you can still continue to upload videos, photos and audio and include any relevant text in the descriptions or comments.

This change will help add more focus to the Zoopy community as a whole, allowing us to concentrate on shareable and embeddable media types that (when compared to the majority of notes) contribute better quality content for visitors and other users to enjoy.

If you’d like to share your thoughts with us about this, please mail us at info@zoopy.com.

While video is just one of the media types that our users can upload, share and view on Zoopy, it’s obviously the one that takes the largest amount of our attention. There are endless dimensions to video, from formats and codecs, to distribution, viewing, advertising and analytics platforms. Recording, uploading, downloading, streaming, live, on demand, mobile, HD, IPTV, the list goes on - and what an exciting list it is!

As we continue to grow Zoopy and Zoopy TV, we’re constantly doing our best to stay ahead of the game in delivering a quality product across the board, imagining, thinking and rethinking as often as we can. This is why we’re following up our visit to Streaming Media West last year with the Streaming Media Europe conference in London this week. It promises to be an insightful examination of where the video industry is at right now and where it’s heading at the speed of light. Tally-ho!

I’m excited to introduce two new features which will enhance video viewing and sharing on Zoopy.

Pseudo streaming

Pseudo streaming allows you to jump ahead to a section of a video you’re watching that you have not yet downloaded or buffered. This technology saves you bandwidth and time, because you no longer have to wait for the video to download up to the point that you’re interested in viewing.

In the video below, I demonstrate how to skip ahead on the video timeline:

Time URLs

Making use of this technology, you are now able to send your friends to a particular point in a video when you send them a Zoopy link. To do this, all you need to know is the point in time you’d like to highlight. You can then use our enhanced Quick URL tool, which appears in the right column on all video viewing pages.

The video below demonstrates how to create a Time URL, and shows how a video will skip to the selected point if you paste the Time URL into your browser:

Please note that pseudo streaming and Time URLs are only available for videos uploaded on or after 8 July 2009. We are in the process of preparing all previously uploaded videos for this functionality.

Downloading and watching videos on your mobile device always involves a trade-off between quality and file size (i.e. bandwidth cost).  The higher the quality, the higher the file size and therefore the cost.  Lower-quality videos, conversely, are cheaper.  We’re now giving you two more options which may better suit your mobile needs.

Streaming

If your mobile device supports RTSP, we’ve created a 108kbit, 176×144 streaming option just for you.  Streaming videos allows you to start watching a video before it is fully downloaded.  If you choose to stop streaming the video before that, you only pay for the portion of the video you’ve downloaded.

This option will suit you best if your mobile data costs are a concern, and you are willing to sacrifice quality for cost.

MP4

On the other end of the spectrum, we’ve introduced a downloadable MP4 version of new videos.  The MP4 files we produce are high quality:

• 16:9 videos: 640×360
• 4:3 videos: 480×360
• Other: 480 width, variable height

These dimensions have been specifically tailored for the iPhone 3G and 3GS, though the MP4 videos will play on a range of devices, from desktop computers to lower-end mobile phones, without difficulty.

This option will suit you if you are less concerned about mobile costs, and are willing to pay a little extra for superior audio and visual quality.

For a side-by-side visualization of all the options, click on the thumbnail below:

What now?

You can try all our video download and streaming options by pointing your phone’s browser to http://m.zoopy.com now. As a start, you can explore the latest On Screen episodes at http://m.zoopy.com/tv/on-screen.

As we continue to grow Zoopy, we’re looking to welcome another senior developer to the team.

If you can tick all the boxes below, please give us a shout. If you make the shortlist, you’ll need to be available for a personal interview at Zoopy HQ in Cape Town in the very near future.

Here’s who we’re looking for:

Senior Developer

Working together with Zoopy’s Lead Developer, you’ll be responsible for:

• Developing innovative, standards-based, database-driven, scalable code
• Maintaining existing codebase and extending current functionality
• Deployment and general health of codebase
• Researching, evaluating and implementing new technologies to support codebase
• Turning ideas into solutions and solutions into super-tight-deadline actions
• Upholding Zoopy’s culture of innovation and can-do spirit

Here’s what you need to bring with you:

• A professional level of verbal and written communication and presentation skills
• 5+ years of relevant development experience
• Substantial LAMP experience, with MVC an enormous advantage
• Ability to work in a fast-paced environment
• Ability to work on projects with minimal supervision but lots of team work

Technically-speaking, you need to be able to demonstrate proficiency in working with:

• Linux, Apache, MySQL and object-orientated PHP
• Javascript frameworks (Prototype, JQuery etc)
• XML, JSON, REST, SOAP, XML-RPC and other related technologies

Please send your application to info@zoopy.com as soon as possible. We’re looking to fill this position by the end of August 2009, so we’re going to begin shortlisting quickly and then move to final interview stages.

On Screen, Zoopy TV’s online and mobile movie review show, hit the movie page in the entertainment sections of The Star, Cape Argus and Daily News newspapers today.

Cape Argus and Daily News

The Star

If you haven’t already seen Jay and Dave’s unique take on the the movie world at large, start watching On Screen now: online | mobile

On Screen’s latest review: GI JOE - Rise of Cobra