Eyejot Video E-mail

[Chris Gohlke]

<div class='os_post_top_link'><a href='http://www.eyejot.com/' target='_blank'>http://www.eyejot.com/</a><br /><br /></div><i>"Eyejot is the first, comprehensive, client-free online video messaging platform ideal for both personal and business communications. It offers everyone the ability to create and receive video messages in a self-contained, spam-free environment. With no client to install, you can start using Eyejot immediately with any browser, on any platform. It even features built-in support for iTunes™ (and iPods™), mobile devices and social networks like MySpace™. Watch Eyejot video examples."</i><br /><br /><img src="http://www.digitalmediathoughts.com/images/cgg-eyejot-42407.jpg" /><br /><br />Looks like a very neat site that really simplifies the process of sending a video e-mail. However, since it only works with Eyejot web mail accounts, the simplicity is kind of wasted and I think that will keep it at the margins until Yahoo or Google either buy them out or just copy the feature.

[Jake Ludington]

I'm not sure what you mean specifically by Eyejot only working with their own Webmail client. I get email notification to my own personal mail address when someone sends me a new Eyejot video message. The message isn't played back in my Outlook client - I have to go to the Web for that - but that's too be expected since Outlook throws an ActiveX security warning if Flash is called directly in a message.

There's also an option to subscribe to new video messages via RSS.

[Chris Gohlke]

I mean you can't directly send or receive from your e-mail client, my understanding is that you have to have an eyejot e-mail address. Sure you can have a notification sent to your regular e-mail, but it is an extra layer that will get in the way for the exact users that this is meant to help. I have not tried out the software and their website is really light on details, but can you even send a message to a person that does not have an eyejot account?

[daryn]

Hi Chris,

Daryn from Eyejot here. Thanks for writing about us, and I did want to clarify your question about how Eyejot works.

While you do have to record Eyejots from the Eyejot website (or widget, more on that later...) you can send them to any email address, at any domain. In fact, we let you import your email address book into the system.

When you send an eyejot, that person will get an email notifying them of the new message, which they can click on to view the video. They don't have to signup or register to do this. This keeps it really simple.

If they do choose to signup, then they are able to record messages, as well as getting the full eyejot experience, with an inbox of their received and sent messages, mobile and rss features, address book, and more.

Beyond all of this, we do also have a "widget", which allows you to put your eyejot greeting onto your own website. If you do this, people can actually send you messages directly from YOUR site, without having to visit or register with Eyejot (assuming you allow anonymous messages, another option).

This all sounds more confusing than it really is! Give it a try, it's free and super easy to get started.


Daryn
CTO/Co-founder
Eyejot

[floepie]

This looks quite nice. But, I prefer to use Sightspeed 6.0, which offers this service as well. In addition, it can be used as a full-featured video messaging/chat app as well. It is considered the best video IM app beating Skype and Live hands down and now even includes Orb-like TV-on-the-go. You won't believe the quality of this.

[daryn]

Hi Floepie,

Thanks for the compliment. Sightspeed is a great product, and the live messaging is very nice.

With Eyejot, we focused on keeping things simple and easy-to-use.

There are lots of products that do live video, from iChat and Skype, to all of the instant messaging products, so we have not addressed that.

Instead, we have developed a video mail platform, whose key selling points (and differentiation from Sightspeed) is that it is free, does not require the installation of any software, and can be accessed from any web browser at anytime.

Daryn