Lisa Bennett, Director of Public Relations & Marketing of Israel’s Kaltura.com, the first open source platform for video creation, management and collaboration, sent me the following announcement:
Wikia and Kaltura Partner to Add Collaborative Video Capabilities to Wikia Communities
Wikia deploys Kaltura’s open source MediaWiki Collaborative Video Extension, allowing users to collaborate in video and other forms of rich-media
San Mateo, CA and New York, NY, March 12, 2008 – Wikia, Inc, the leading provider of community resources for building and organizing free content on every topic, and Kaltura, Inc, a pioneer in Collaborative Media, announced today that the companies have partnered to offer collaborative video functionality to Wikia’s communities. Wikia has deployed Kaltura’s collaborative video extension to the MediaWiki software and the functionality is now available on several leading Wikia sites. The functionality allows Wikia users to jointly create and edit collaborative videos, audio tracks, animation, and slideshows as well as text and images.
“Wikia’s communities are comprised of passionate and active users who understand the value in sharing knowledge – Kaltura’s collaborative video technology gives users even more ways to collaborate, which complements our existing functionalities perfectly”, said Angela Beesley co-founder of Wikia, “Kaltura’s tool is easy to use and intuitive and I am confident that we will see some very interesting and creative additions to the various wiki communities now that our users have this functionality at hand.”
With the Kaltura Collaborative Video Extension, any user can start a collaborative video project and upload clips, photos, or audio tracks to the wiki. Users can also help edit the collaborative result using Kaltura’s online video editor. When adding clips, users can contribute their own material or import content from the Kaltura Network of legally remixable content, which contains millions of videos, audio clips, and images that are in the public domain or that are available under the Creative Commons BY-SA license. A live example of a collaborative video on Wikia can be found at http://halo.wikia.com/wiki/Halo3.
“We are honored to partner with an innovator like Wikia. Launching the open source extension to MediaWiki is our first step towards supporting all other leading web platforms and assembling together the largest Creative Commons repository and a Global Network of rich media collaborators,” said Ron Yekutiel, Chairman and CEO of Kaltura.
“In the spirit of openness and collaboration, we invite all MediaWiki-based sites and other partners to join our growing Network and deploy our technology in their sites, in order to enable their users to collaborate in the creation of rich-media,” said Shay David, Kaltura’s CTO. “Soon we will be announcing our support for other leading wiki-software, content management, and blogging platforms. We also invite developers to join us and contribute their time and skills to advance and enhance our open source projects.”
About Wikia, Inc.
Since Wikia’s launch in November 2004, 1 million articles on 5,000 topics have been created and edited by over 375,000 registered users in 70 languages.
Wikia enables groups to share information, news, stories, media and opinions that fall outside the scope of an encyclopedia. Jimmy Wales and Angela Beesley launched Wikia in 2004 to provide community-based wikis.
Wikia is committed to openness, inviting anyone to contribute web content. Authors retain their own copyrights and allow others to freely reuse their content under a variety of GNU and Creative Commons Licenses, allowing widespread distribution of knowledge and ideas.
For more information, please visit: http://www.wikia.com
About Kaltura
Kaltura has developed the first open source platform for video creation, management and collaboration. Kaltura’s platform enables any site to seamlessly and cost-effectively integrate advanced interactive rich-media functionalities, including video searching, uploading, importing, editing, annotating, remixing, and sharing. The platform also includes unique collaboration functionalities that allow groups of users to create rich media together, and enables publishers to access and syndicate reusable content across the Kaltura Network of content and to enjoy aggregated hosted video services such as video advertising, professional editing, and DVD printing.
Founded in 2006, Kaltura’s management and advisory team includes top notch advertising, marketing, and media executives as well as open source experts and seasoned technology entrepreneurs, including co-founders of ICQ, Cyota, and Destinator Technologies. Since its public launch in September 2007, New York-based Kaltura has won the People’s Choice Award at both the TechCrunch40 event, and the Mashable Open Web Awards.
For more information visit http://www.kaltura.com or visit the Kaltura blog at http://www.kaltura.com/blog/. Users can also test the MediaWiki Collaborative Video functionality and provide feedback at http://www.kaltura.com/devwiki.
I'm a former general partner at google ventures, head of Google for Entrepreneurs in Europe and founding head of Campus London, Google's first physical hub for startups.
I'm also the founder of Techbikers, a non-profit bringing together the startup ecosystem on cycling challenges in support of Room to Read. Since inception in 2012 we've built 11 schools and 50 libraries in the developing world.
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