Microsoft's Soapbox returns with filtering technology
update Microsoft is again inviting people to join video-sharing site Soapbox, following the site's two-month hiatus.
On Friday, Soapbox re-emerged with software tools designed to thwart copyright violations. A note posted on Soapbox's blog said the systems, created by digital fingerprinting company Audible Magic, offer "proactive filtering" of videos uploaded to the site.
"Audible Magic bases their filtering on the video's audio track and their database is being updated constantly," Soapbox said in its blog.
In March, Soapbox abruptly stopped accepting new registrations. The move came a day after Microsoft agreed to stream long-form video for a joint venture between NBC Universal and News Corp.
To that point, Soapbox was littered with pirated videos. This put Microsoft in a pickle. The software giant was agreeing to distribute content for entertainment companies whose copyright was commonly violated at its video-sharing site.
How would that look?
Soapbox joins such competitors as Guba, BitTorrent, MySpace and Dailymotion, which have launched filtering programs. YouTube, the sector's top player, is more than six months late in deploying a system.
Like YouTube, Soapbox offers an embeddable player that users can post to other Web sites.
Greg Sandoval covers media and digital entertainment for CNET News. He is a former reporter for The Washington Post and the Los Angeles Times. E-mail Greg, or follow him on Twitter at http://twitter.com/sandoCNET.
In the past, MS could take three swings at something, and in the end, make a decent showing of what they produced.
The internet evolves too fast for MS to keep up with. (thank god) What is amazing, is how long MS is trying to keep so many projects alive which have zero chance of ever changing whatever market the are intended for. If MS made cars they would be trying to attach HEMIs to Model Ts about now.
1. Better quality videos. I upload one video on YouTube. It was ok. I uploaded the same video on Soapbox, and it comes out way better. It's like comparing a conventional TV to an HDTV. It was that better.
2. It's all flash, so you can do tons of stuff. With YouTube, all the pages are static. On Soapbox, you can move around with great ease, and no problems. You can search for some videos here, while the video player keeps playing. It's that nice.
3. It's more nicer to upload than YouTube. You can upload multiple things, and you don't have to wait for videos to finish uploading while you can surf around and watch more videos.
4. Better looking UI. YouTube has always looked as crud. Only lately has it gotten better. Soapbox has a smashing UI that's hard to beat.
Of course there's still problems like amount of content they currently have, character type/symbols limitations, and some other stuff, but it's almost in every way better than YouTube. So sorry, but at least MS has done something right on the web for once.