July 20th, 2007
Chime.TV's subject-based channels cut across Internet video sources with one UI
Here at Mashup Camp in Silicon Valley, Taylor McKnight (winner of the Best Mashup Contest at the first Mashup Camp in February 2006 because of his mashup Podbop.org) returned in hopes of re-staking his claim to being the world’s hottest mashup developer and he did not disappoint. He and partner Chirag Mehta swept the Best Mashup contest with a mashup called Chime.TV.
To me, the concept behind Chime.TV seems pretty simple. What the browser is to the Internet, Chime.TV is to Internet-based video. It’s an incredibly simple way to find great video content on the Internet without needing to care about the source of that video.
Whereas other video search sites focus on returning decent video search results, Chime.TV simply offers you a bunch of subject-oriented channels (eg: sports, politics, music, etc.) and, at any given point, offers you the best 100 Internet-based videos that Chime.TV can find for each of those channels. The content comes from a bunch of sources ranging from Youtube to Blip.TV and, in my interview of McKnight, he basically admits that the 100 best picks are subjective (he’s looking for people to be volunteer curators for some of those channels). But once the videos are picked, it’s kind of like browsing the TV guide on your cable box. All the channels of content are presented through one user interface and once you pick a video, the content is brought back into Mehta’s homegrown Flash-based video player.
If you don’t like the channels of content that Chime.TV has to offer, not only can you build your own, you can share them (or other videos you like) with other people. Describing in text can hardly do it justice. So, I’ve got a video for you. Once your done watching the video, I think you’ll be as convinced as I am that you should be using Chime.TV like you use your cable box. Congrats to Taylor and Chirag for once again winning the Best Mashup Contest.
