richardgoodwin.com

As covered by Techcrunch this evening, the startup of one of my good friends is going to beta invite stage (officially like stage 3 of the Web 2.0-a-holic ladder).

bix.com is a roll-your-own contest site, with focus on video karaoke and lip sync using a slick integrated webcam app right in your browser. (On the Mac it’s a Java applet). See yours truly during a recording session in this screenshot:

You can also have contests where you record your own videos without a soundtrack, or upload photos for a photo contest. (Sorry, no video uploads (yet? :)).  Other bix members can vote positive or negative on your entries, so that entries can be tallied and winners picked once each contest expires.

The current song list (provided by soundscene.com) has almost 1,000 songs, spanning classics (like holiday songs) to modern hits among the kiddies (go Fall Out Boy!). 

Web 2.0-ness abounds with:

• Ajax searches on the song list
• “Thickbox” style overlays when submitting actions like emailing a link to a friend (more on this later)
• Wacky name (see qwerky for more on this)
• Voting! (but no tagging…I shudder to think how my entry would be tagged )
• Comments!

Areas that could use work:

• More emphasis on popular activities: Entrants and contests that are getting lots of hits should be shown more prominently
• Issues with the video recording applet on Mac: I’m told this is more of a Firefox bug, as Safari and Camino seem to work much better. I have it on very good faith that the bix folks are Mac-friendly so I expect this is high on the priority list!
• More songs! I can only butcher so many songs before I need more selection
• Private entries: it would be nice if I could store several iterations of my performance and then pick the best one before going “public” with it.

I took the plunge and uploaded an entry, which serves as the world-premiere of me singing for anyone other than my poor wife (and 24/7 at that). You can view the entry (and vote me up) here:
organa

http://www.bix.com/nhs/view_video.htm?id=207

Of course, you’ll need to be a bix member, and I’ve been given the opportunity to invite readers of my blog into the private beta. To snag an invite, mail me at bix [at] richardgoodwin .dot. com.

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