international posts

Hulu plans to go international

by Brad Linder Mar 24th 2009

Online video site Hulu has become one of the most popular video portals in the internet over the past year. It showcases high quality content from major television and film studios with fewer commercials than you'd see if you watched the same programs on TV. But Hulu has faced one major hurdle: The company doesn't have deals in place to distribute that content outside of the US, which is why international users are typically met with a message telling them that videos aren't available when they visit the site.

Hulu's been planning to go global for a while now, but it looks like the company could be a bit closer. PaidContent reports that the company has hired a new vice president to oversee international operations.

It seems likely that one of the first areas outside the US that Hulu will be available will be the UK. What I'd love to see is a reciprocal relationship, where in addition to streaming US content to British viewers, Hulu could work out a deal to distribute BBC content in the US.

Tags: hulu, international, online-video

Filed under: Web services, Social Software, Mobile, Web

Get Twitter tracking and free international SMS with Twe2

by Jay Hathaway Feb 20th 2009

Remember when Twitter let you track your @replies and search terms, and when SMS alerts were free around the world? Well, I do, and I miss it.

Fortunately, Twe2 has come along to fill the void. The service lets you customize which Twitter alerts you want to get on your phone, when you want to get them, and how many you want per hour.

So far Twe2 has worked as promised for me, although it can be slow at times due to the volume of signups. This isn't a serious drawback, since Twitter alerts could also be slow, back when you could still get them. Twe2 is ad-supported so it can stay free, but a short text ad isn't that distracting and it doesn't keep you from getting complete messages.

The service could improve by switching to oauth instead of requiring a Twitter password, but for right now, I'm just happy to get @replies to my phone again.

Tags: free-sms, international, oauth, sms, text, tracking, Twe2, twitter

Filed under: Internet, Video, Web services

Online video site Veoh limits international access

by Brad Linder Jun 2nd 2008

Some online video sites like Hulu have gotten a lot of flack for being unavailable outside of the US. But you know what? It's expensive to stream video over the internet. And it's even more expensive to secure the right to stream copyrighted works internationally. It's also much easier to sign advertising deals in some countries than others, which helps justify the streaming costs.

So how do other online video sites like Veoh pay for worldwide video streaming? It turns out they don't. This weekend a number of Veoh users around the world started reporting on Wikipedia that access was blocked in their countries. And today NewTeeVee confirmed that Veoh has turns off service for all but 33 countries.

Veoh says it's maintaining service in the countries where it has the most viewers, and that only 10 percent of its audience comes from the countries that are experiencing service cuts. The company reportedly is not running out of money, but is trying to focus ont he countries where it has the best chances of actually making money. Again, this all makes perfect sence. But it still stinks if you live in Venezuela, Argentina, the Dominican Republic, the United Arab Emirates, Lebanon, Romania, Thailand, South Africa, or any of the other countries where Veoh is reportedly no longer available.

Tags: international, online-video, veoh

Filed under: Internet, Windows, Macintosh, Linux, Commercial, VoIP

Skype to launch unlimited international calling plan

by Brad Linder Apr 21st 2008

Have friends, relatives, or business contacts located in faraway lands? Internet telephony company Skype is launching its first plan that lets you make unlimited international PC to telephone calls, assuming you're calling a landline in one of 34 countries covered by the plan.

Most of Europe is covered, as well as the US, Canada, New Zealand, Australia, Japan, Korea and Taiwan.The $9.95/month plan doesn't cover calls to cellphones in all areas, but you can call mobile phones in the US, Canada, China, Hong Kong, and Singapore.

Or you can just convince everybody you know to install Skype on their computers and mobile phones so you can make Skype to Skype calls for free.

[via AP]

Tags: international, skype, telephone, voip

Filed under: Internet, Video

Hulu acknowledges existence of TV viewers outside of the US

by Brad Linder Apr 11th 2008

Online video site Hulu has gotten a lot of good press over the last few months for actually offering up full-length TV shows and movies that you might actually want to watch. There are hundreds of episodes of popular TV shows from networks like Fox and NBC, and movies from partners including Fox, Universal, and MGM. There's just one problem, you can only stream these videos if you live in the US.

That's partially because Hulu only has content licensing and agreements to distribute the content in the US. For the most part, anyone outside of the US who has tried visiting Hulu has gotten an error message. But Emily Turrettini of WatchingTV Online reports that Hulu has finally taken the remarkable step of posting a message that explains why the service is inaccessible and stating that Hulu hopes to go online abroad soon.

There's also an option to signup for email notification as soon as Hulu goes online in your region.

[via NewTeeVee]

Tags: hulu, international, internet-video, online-video

Filed under: E-mail, Google

Google rolls out Gmail updates in 37 languages

by Brad Linder Feb 14th 2008

It's been a few months since Google rolled out some major updates to the Gmail interface, including support for colored labels, group chat, graphic emoticons, a new contact manager, and new keyboard shortcuts.

Now Google is offering the same features to non-English speakers. The company is rolling out the updated version of Gmail to 37 new languages. There are still a few unsupported languages. But if you speak Croation, Icelandic, Hebrew, or Arabic, you can still user the older version of Gmail.

The update also means that the rest of the world gets to experience the joy of watching their Gmail-specific browser plugins stop working. Fortunately, third party developers have been hard at work for the last few months updating their Gmail notifiers and Greasemonkey scripts. So if you're reading a translated version of this page and you've noticed your plugins don't work anymore, it might be a good time to check the developer homepages to see if there are new versions available.

Tags: gmail, international, languages

Filed under: Internet, Video, web 2.0

Watch Hulu videos outside of the US with Hotspot Shield

by Simon Kerbel Jan 7th 2008

Since our recent invite bonanza, we've enjoyed the heck out of our Hulu membership. But, since its inception, Hulu has been a US-only party. And, while OPENHulu or TVparadise opened up Hulu to a crowd of non-invitees, international users were still out of luck.

Of course if you're willing to trick Hulu into thinking your non-US computer is actually connected to a US internet connection, you can get around that restriction. One way for non-US residents to watch Hulu videos is by using a program called Hotspot Shield. We say "it seems" because, since we are inside the US, we don't have a method of testing whether or not this works.

Here's how it done:

Hotspot Shield is a free program which creates a virtual private network between your computer and a wireless router. While its focus is mainly on protecting your private information from hackers (you've seen them before: those shady characters sunk deep into a comfy chair at Starbucks, a Dell on their lap, a dark beanie almost covering their eyes, a decaf java chip mocha Frappucino melting silently on the table next to them), in this case, it keeps Hulu from recognizing that you are outside the US. Therefore, because Hulu doesn't know where you are from, it assumes the best and gives you full, unadulterated access to all content.

The best thing is, if this works, it will work for all US-only sites (Hello, Pandora)!

International Download Squad readers, please let us know if this works for you in the comments.

[Via profit42.com, thanks Denis!]

Tags: hotspot shield, HotspotShield, hulu, international, streaming, videos, vpn

Filed under: Internet, Video, AOL, Search

AOL takes Truveo online video search international

by Brad Linder Oct 31st 2007

Just a few months after relaunching Truveo as a video search engine (as opposed to a video sharing site), AOL is taking Truveo worldwide. Or at least adding localized versions for a number of countries including France, Germany, India, Japan, Korea, Spain, Tawain, and the UK.

AOL, which owns both Truveo and this blog, plans to bring more regional versions online in the next few months. Australia, Brazil, Italy, Mexico, The Netherlands, Russia, and Turkey are all on the waiting list, because we know they've been waiting with baited breath for yet another website dedicated to online video.

While Truveo international might not be exactly what anyone outside of AOL was asking for, it makes a lot of sense. There are hundreds of sites dedicated to professional and user generated content not just in the US, but across the globe. And Truveo is already a pretty polished search engine for finding videos whether they're produced for YouTube or the Associated Press.

Much of the content on the US version of the site is already coming from overseas sources. Regional versions will make it easier for citizens to find Japanese, Indian, or German videos without sifting through all the English language crap on the web.

The localized sites do have the same limitations as the US version of Truveo. While the site indexes videos from across the web, and lets you play many videos without leaving the site, there are still a number of videos that are only available from the content producer's website. So it's hard to tell when you're looking at a screen filled with video thumbnails whether clicking on one will make a video start playing or take you to another website where you may need to install a browser plugin before the video will play properly.

Tags: international, online-video, Truveo, video-portal, video-search

Filed under: Google, Beta

Google Reader goes international, loses beta tag

by Brad Linder Sep 18th 2007

Google Reader has come out of beta. That's right, Google now has at least two services that don't have a beta tag, their search engine and Reader. Gmail, which predates Google Reader still wears a beta label even though it's been a while since we've seen any major new features.

But just a few weeks after Google added the much sought-after search function to its RSS Reader, the company has decided the product is all grown up and ready to go out into the world. And we mean that literally, Google has added support for new languages including French, Italian, German, Spanish, Chinese, Japanese, and Korean. There's even a UK English version.

But we have to say, there does seem to be a bit of extra white space at the top left of the screen where the familiar "beta" once rested.

Tags: google-reader, international, multilingual, rss

Filed under: Fun, Games, Internet, Kids, Blogging, Web services, Social Software

Teenie Bopper social network site Piczo gets a larger vocabulary

by Chris Gilmer Apr 20th 2007

One thing that tends to take a while in the Web 2.0 market is the expansion to non-English speaking markets. Even Google is guilty of waiting a while to open up services for non-English speaking residents of the world.

Piczo, the social network that specializes in the teen market, has finally expanded to include other languages. The second place superstar in the social space for teens now has international versions for users in Germany, France and Spain.

It's a move that hasn't come soon enough for the over 1.2 million users in Germany alone. Piczo's current user base is approx. 25 million users worldwide.

[via webware]

Tags: france, germany, international, myspace, network, piczo, social, spain, users, web 2, Web2

Filed under: Internet, News, Web services

Netvibes international updates

by Ross McKillop Dec 28th 2006

Netvibes blog new international versions

The folks over at Netvibes have been very busy as of late. In the last few weeks they've released 10 new international versions of their "customizable Web 2.0 home page/portal solution" (buzzwords aside, it's a terrific service). If you haven't given it a try yet, perhaps one these new versions will entice you: Greek, Turkish, Quebecer, Ukrainian, Russian, Danish, Canadian, Polish, Brazilian and UK.

If you want to help Netvibes to build a local version for your country, I'm sure they would be thrilled if you contact them.

Tags: ajax, brazilian, canadian, danish, greek, international, languages, netvibes, polish, portal, quebecer, rss, russian, turkish, uk, ukrainian, updates, web 2.0

Filed under: Web services, VoIP

REBTEL: International calls on the cheap

by Jordan Running Jul 14th 2006

Along similar lines as JAJAH, REBTEL harnesses the power of VoIP to make international calling cheap, and it doesn't even require a funny-looking headset. It has a base rate of $1 per week, and you aren't charged for weeks when you don't use the service. After that, there are two kinds of service, REBout and REBin: REBout gives you a local number to call a friend for a small per-minute fee (e.g. calls to France cost $0.02/minute for land lines or $0.20 for mobile numbers), with the first 30 seconds free. REBin is free (apart from the $1/week) but a little more complicated--you make a REBin call by entering your number and your friend's on the REBTEL web site, calling your friend on the number it gives you, and then having them hang up and call you back at the number provided to them. You can try REBin for free on the REBTEL web site. Personally I prefer JAJAH's method because it does the dialing for you, but if you spend a lot of time on international calls, Rebtel's flat rate combined with REBin is cheaper in the long run. I did a test call (albeit with someone sitting in the same room as me) and there was a noticeable delay, but nothing intolerable.

Tags: cheap, international, jajah, phone, rebtel, voip

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