osTube www.ostube.de is a social networking media platform allowing the sharing of music, video, pictures and documents. It has been developed by AUVICA GmbH in Munich, Germany. Their other product lines are MyRadio, Reisepanne, and VIMP.

osTube is available by three product editions: Community, Professional and Enterprise. Community edition is free but you can’t run any ads and social networking communities with it. The Professional edition allows banner and video (priced differently) ads as Enterprise edition is a not priced solution for commercial projects which can include Live Streaming, Mobile payments, etc.

Professional edition costs $149 to manage Google AdSense ads with some extra templates and you should spend $299 when you want to run video ads and have more templates included.

Installation and configuration.
AUVICA promised us a test environment and without their help, I would not have been able to get the product running at all. The upload and distribution of files went quickly but afterwards I ended up with list of Apache Linux settings errors that I was unable to change without a console access besides modifying directory rights using ftp. Even I downloaded the English version of the software, the installation and error messages where in German. So seems that not all installation messages where yet translated. I also encountered several spelling mistakes in English language version further.

When finally I was able to complete installation routines, I ended up “Insufficient Rights” SQL error when trying to access the administration module. Finally when they had fixed it I was able to use the administration module when logged in as “admin”.

When logged to the administration module, the first page shows all developers news and you re able to login to developers forum to seek help.

The users section allows to manage users, including a modification of their profile, lock users, give users administration or moderation rights, modify groups and configure the minimum length parameters for passwords, usernames, group names, etc. You can get a list of those users who have missing address data or e-mail address not verified.

From the module configuration settings, besides site parameters the administrator can setup the language (English, German) which sections (video, audio, pictures, documents) are in use, is member address required, is it visible, is birthday data visible, maximum upload size, notifications when media item has been reported, will the uploaded media and new users to be approved by administrator. There is also possibility to setup site metags, paths and video conversion settings.

The Layout section allows changing the templates, uploading site logo and changing portal objects colours. The administrator is able upload watermark supporting only PNG format.

The modules section allows configuring which kind of modules will appear in first page, including the news module where the administrator can enter a separate message for each section.

Banner management section in Professional edition allows to setup banner campaigns as “superbanner” (horizontal banner over the screen which can be shown in top, below the header or in bottom), “skyscraper” (vertical banner in the right side of the screen) or Extended. Using extended setup, I was able to setup Google Adsense which can be shown in all mentioned sections. The campaign options management allows defining the priority of banner ranging 1-100 scale, duration and which pages this banner will be shown. There where no possibility to setup certain amount of views or clicks. The banner statistics gives campaign views and clicks information including click thru ratio.

Site statistics shows top users, top media, top videos, top music, top pictures and top documents.

As the administrator I was able to design elements in home and community page, including setup the element width by dragging and dropping them. The screen seems to be divided to four columns. However those boxes somehow didn’t want to stay in the place where I wanted them to be.

Usability
The home page has sections Featured Video, Las added and Video Top 3, New Users with Picture, Latest messages, Chat, Top rated, Icon Description and Tag Cloud. The chat box button says “Send Mail”.

After the confirmation, new member is able to edit profile, upload media, edit friend list, manage groups, empty history or delete profile.

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ClipShare www.clip-share.com is online community building software for sharing videos similar to YouTube. It runs on Linux and Apache Web server, demands PHP version 4.3 or higher and MySql 4+. It also needs several additional applications like GD Libary 2+, Mplayer and Mencoder, Flv2tools, Libogg and Libvorbis and LAME MP3 encoder to be installed which can be downloaded from other sites free of charge.

The installation should take some hours as besides unpacking the software modules you should create your MySql database and run script manually, parameters in several files and change directory rights. After that you should be able to access Admin module to setup the site video channels, the site subscription and advertising parameters (integrated support for Google Adsense and Yahoo Publishers Network).

I assume that when starting to install all requested modules, the process could take several days. However, the company can provide you the installation service or you can host your site in their server starting $2 per month. For the quote and ordering the installation service you should submit them a ticket having root access server administration username and password ready. So this product is not suitable to install for shared hosting services where you are unable to get access to the system root so maybe their hosting could be better solution to anyone considering their product.

Within a week I didn’t have any answer to my open ticket so I assume that their technical and marketing support wasn’t much online (live support was showing always Offline) however they have Client Area so maybe answers can be found from there. They have published FAQ section of installation problems and they are running online forum. Based on Hot Scripts portal feedbacks their technical support problems seems to be come across recently (2008) with probable expansion as previous comments has been always positive.
Their End User agreement says that ClipShare Product is registered trademark of ScriptXperts however either the EUL or their website didn’t had any company information and their liability maximum is $5.

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