Filed under: Business, Internet, Video, Windows, Web services, P2P
An inside look at the Venice Project
by Chris Gilmer Dec 21st 2006 at 1:45PM
Everyone is dying to find out what the founder of Skype's latest project called the Venice Project is all about, and trying their hardest to get a peek into what it's all about. Well it's finally out, in beta form of course--a very limited beta, it seems. Om Malik caught an inside look into the much-anticipated disruptive P2P television application which fits in nicely with Janus and Niklas' free music and free phone offerings. Venice is a desktop application working exclusively on Windows XP SP2, and takes approximately one minute to download on a high speed connection. While Om reports that the photo quality of the site is incredible, and issues that once seemed to be present are now non existent, switching channels or menu options in the application saw a rather large delay. With the giant success of both KaZaA and Skype, I wonder how many media companies will jump on the bandwagon with this offering? Between KaZaA and Skype, Janus Friis and Niklas Zennstrom sure know how to turn an industry on their backs. Take a look at some screen shots at GigaOM.
I don't know if this is a labor of love or merely the brainchild of four very gifted games designers, but Level Up is a really weird mash-up of gaming elements that you have probably never seen in a Flash game before.
Let's start with the premise itself: Groundhog Day meets Memento. The game experience revolves around 'days': you explore the world and the clock slowly ticks towards the evening. You bounce around picking up gems and talking to the denizens of 'Level Upland'. Eventually you feel tired and head back to ...
