Twango
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Twango is an online media sharing site that supports multiple file types such as photos, video, audio, and documents. It provides users a means of repurposing their media, including sharing, editing, organizing and categorizing. In addition, Twango saves all the original media and its metadata (this includes, but is not limited to, IPTC and EXIF). Non members are free to browse the site, while members can upload media of their own. Sign up for a basic account is free, and provides 250 megabytes of upload bandwidth a month.
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[edit] History
Twango was founded by Jim Laurel, Mike Laurel, Serena Glover, Philip Carmichael, and Randy Kerr, all of whom were previously managers at Microsoft.
The beta version of the site was released to the public in April 11, 2006. The site officially launched on October 11, 2006.
[edit] Notable Features
[edit] Channels
Twango users organize their media in containers known as channels. A user's entire media collection is stored in what is known as "My Media". Channels represent a cross-section of "My Media". The same piece of media can appear in multiple channels, giving a different context to said media. For example, a picture of friends at a party could appear in a user's "friends" channel as well as in the user's "party" channel. Twango members can subscribe to a channel, receiving notifications when new media has been uploaded to a channel or when new comments have been added. Each channel can also be specified as public or private. If it is specified as private it can only be accessed by invitation. Users can also create open channels which allow other users to upload their own content.
[edit] Upload methods
Twango members can upload their media in a variety of ways. Users can upload via the website, either through a basic upload interface where the user browses for files to upload one at a time, or through a web based drag and drop uploader which enables them to upload multiple files at once by dragging them from a folder on their machine and onto the browser (this requires ActiveX or Java).
In addition to browser based uploading, Twango also supports uploading through email, mobile phone, and the Windows web publishing wizard.
[edit] Twidgets
A twango twidget is an embedded snippet of code (currently Flash or Javascript) that can be added to a user's blog. For example, a user can embed a Flash ticker on his or her blog which will display all the media from a channel.
[edit] Supported file types and feeds
Twango currently supports the following file formats: 3g2, 3gp, 3gp2, 3gpp, 3gpp2, aac, aif, aifc, aiff, amr, asf, asr, asx, au, avi, bmp, cad, cmx, cod, css, dib, doc, dot, dtd, dwf, fla, flv, gif, ico, ief, ipx, jfif, jpe, jpeg, jpg, lsf, m1a, m1v, m3u, m4a, m4p, m4v, mdi, mid, midi, mov, movie, mp2, mp3, mp4, mpa, mpe, mpeg, mpg, mpp, mpv2, mqv, nsc, pbm, pdf, pgm, png, pot, ppm, pps, ppt, psd, pub, qt, ra, ram, ras, rgb, rmi, rtf, rtx, scd, snd, swf, tif, tiff, tsv, txt, vsd, vss, vst, vsx, vtx, wav, wax, wbmp, wm, wma, wml, wmp, wmv, wmx, wri, xbm, xla, xlc, xlm, xls, xlt, xlw, xml, xsd, xsl, xslt, z, zip.
NOTE: Movies and audio are condensed and played back via a Flash based media player, but media can also be downloaded in the format it was originally uploaded in. In addition, Twango does not implement any technology to block copyrighted material, but instead relies on the community to "flag" inappropiate media. Media that has reached a certain flagging threshold is then automatically removed.
Twango supports various feeds, including channel feeds, most recent media feeds, and most popular feeds. It supports RSS 2.0, ATOM 0.3, and ATOM 1.0
