Redmond, WA and San Mateo, CA, November 15, 2000 — SpotLife, a leader in taking Personal Video Broadcasting to the mainstream, today announced an agreement with Microsoft Corp. under which SpotLife will provide hosting services for users of Microsoft® Windows® Movie Maker in North America and Western Europe. Windows Movie Maker is an easy-to-use feature of the Windows Millennium Edition (Windows Me) operating system that allows consumers to easily capture, edit and store home movies on their computer using the Windows Media™
Format. SpotLife will provide users of Windows Me with an easy way to seamlessly store and broadcast their video messages, home video movies or events to family, friends and colleagues around the world.
“Windows Movie Maker was created to satisfy the overwhelming consumer demand for simplifying the process of creating, editing, storing and organizing their home movies,”
said Jonathan Usher, group manager of the Digital Media Division at Microsoft.
“This new service from SpotLife is a great complement in that it provides users of Windows Movie Maker in North America and Europe with an easy-to-use way to store and broadcast their home videos.”
Using Windows Media, Windows Movie Maker enables consumers to easily edit, store and share their home videos on their home PC in easy-to-manage file sizes. Consumers can incorporate slides, background music, sound effects and voice-over narration into a home movie recorded with either a digital or analog camcorder. With a few clicks of a mouse inside Windows Movie Maker, users can easily save their edited home videos right to the Web using SpotLife services. Windows Me users can then broadcast their home production on the SpotLife site, where the movie can be shared with family, friends and colleagues. SpotLife’s services will be available to Windows Me users by the end of this year.
“SpotLife has seen such explosive growth in the use of the PC to edit home movies that we identified a need to offer users the opportunity to easily store and broadcast videos taken with their camcorders,”
said Amit Goswamy, President and CEO of SpotLife.
“By providing this new hosting service for users of Windows Movie Maker, we have increased our depth of service offerings and made the broadcasting and viewing experience more rewarding and enriching.”
Windows Movie Maker enables consumers to turn the PC desktop into an easy-to-use home movie-editing studio by incorporating slides, background music, sound effects and voice-over narration into a home movie recorded with either a digital or analog camcorder. Using SpotLife’s free services, users can then broadcast their home production on the SpotLife site, where the material can be shared with family and friends. SpotLife’s service has made Internet video broadcasting as simple as ‘point, click and broadcast’ and automatically allows customers to broadcast live, recorded or still images on the Internet, where the material can be shared with family and friends. The new service from SpotLife further demonstrates SpotLife’s leadership position within the Personal Video Broadcasting marketplace.
About SpotLife
SpotLife ( www.spotlife.com ) is the first company to bring Personal Video Broadcasting to the mainstream with a fun, easy and comprehensive solution. Using SpotLife’s free service, anyone with a PC, Internet video camera and dial-up Internet connection can broadcast live or prerecorded video with audio with “point, click and broadcast” simplicity. SpotLife is privately owned and funded by CMGI’s @Ventures, Atlas Venture, aventic partners (the venture arm of UBS) and Logitech. SpotLife is located in San Mateo, Calif. For more information about the company, please contact Rick Mitchell at 650-356-6928.
About Windows Media
Windows Media is the leading digital media platform, providing unmatched audio and video quality to consumers, content providers, solution providers, software developers and corporations. Windows Media offers the industry’s only integrated rights-management solution and the most scalable and reliable streaming technology tested by independent labs. Windows Media Technologies includes Windows Media Player for consumers, Windows Media Services for servers, Windows Media Tools for content creation, and the Windows Media Software Development Kit (SDK) for software and hardware developers. Windows Media Player, available in 26 languages, is the fastest-growing media player. More information about Windows Media can be found at http://www.microsoft.com/windowsmedia/ .
About Microsoft
Founded in 1975, Microsoft (Nasdaq
“MSFT”
) is the worldwide leader in software, services and Internet technologies for personal and business computing. The company offers a wide range of products and services designed to empower people through great software — any time, any place and on any device.
Microsoft, Windows and Windows Media are either registered trademarks or trademarks of Microsoft Corp. in the United States and/or other countries.
The names of actual companies and products mentioned herein may be the trademarks of their respective owners.
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