Bizarre Foods’ Andrew Zimmern to host live chat on Kyte!

Andrew Zimmern, host of the Travel Channel’s Bizarre Foods show, has launched a branded Kyte channel and will be utilizing the Kyte Platform’s real-time multimedia chat feature to host a live chat on Tuesday, Sept. 9 at 11 p.m. ET/8 p.m. PT.  The chat will take place immediately following the season premiere of Bizarre Foods, which begins at 10 p.m. ET/7 p.m. PT.

Bizarre Foods is a travel and cuisine program that focuses on exotic foods from around the world.  Whether its a frog’s still-beating heart, Amazonian piranha, or a lamb’s eyeball, Zimmern will eat it!  So be sure to tune in to the season premiere of Bizarre Foods and after the show, chat live with Zimmern on the Bizarre Foods Kyte channel.

Spearhead’s Michael Franti to Kyte the Power to the Peaceful Festival

Michael Franti, lead singer of the revolutionary music group Spearhead, has launched a Kyte channel to broadcast live from the 10th Annual Power to the Peaceful Festival in San Francisco.

Other performers and speakers at the festival will include Ziggy Marley, Warren Haynes of The Allman Brothers, Congresswoman Lynn Woolsey and many more.  So if you can’t make it down to Speedway Meadows in Golden Gate Park for the show, be sure to tune in to the Power to the Peaceful Kyte channel for footage of the performances and artist interviews.

Consequence grows fan base on Kyte

Hip hop artist Consequence is featured in a video interview on Beet.tv in which he talks about how Kyte has helped him grow his online presence and fan base.

In addition to his own blog Consequence’s Kyte channel has been embedded on over 100,000 sites (including hip hop publications and fellow artist blogs) and has received over 1.4 million hits!  Consequence demonstrates why content is king, as he provides viewers with highly entertaining, behind the scenes footage — from playing Connect Four with Jay-Z, to Mos Def and Kanye West talking about their plans for the next Black Star album.

Be on the lookout for Consequence’s new album, “You Win Some, You Lose Some,” which will be released on Kanye West’s G.O.O.D Music label early next year.

Kyte Tip - How to Create a Channel Changer

One of the cool features on the Kyte Platform is the ability to create a channel changer, so that viewers can check out other branded content within your player —without having to be redirected to another site. Why would you want to do this? It adds more value to your channel, keeps viewers on your destination site (e.g. blog, web site, social network, etc.) and provides a more engaging experience. For example, you could link to a fan channel, or a fellow recording artist on the same label, or a blogger on your blog roll that has a Kyte channel.

So how do you set up a channel changer?

1. Determine two or more Kyte channels you would like users to be able to browse
   
2. Create links to the channels by going to www.kyte.tv, click manage channel (found under your channel’s name), click edit player branding, enter the following syntax:

Channel 1: Insert your info wherever text is Red
<a href=“event:setUri?channels/1940” ><b>Fan Channel</b></a>

Channel 2: Insert your info wherever it is Red
<a href=“event: setUri?channels/1939” ><b>Artist Channel</b></a>

Below is an example that we've created for the purpose of this blog post. To change channels, click on the links at the top of the player.

We hope that you find this information useful. Happy Kyting!

New features on the Kyte Platform!

Our partners have been very active this summer, leveraging the Kyte Platform in new and exciting ways to promote their brands and engage with fans. As we continue to see a steady and significant increase in traffic, we've taken steps to prepare for future growth by focusing our recent development efforts on performance optimization and architectural platform improvements. But that's not all we've done. Following are a few of the features and enhancements our users can expect with this release:

New Features

• In-show Overlay Ads – Partners can now display an overlay ad in the bottom 1/3 of the viewer canvas

• Show Production Ads – Partners can customize splash ads during show production (when uploading media)

• Kyte Mobile Media Optimizer – For partners that want to integrate Kyte media into their mobile web applications, Kyte Mobile Media Optimizer can be accessed via the public API to properly customize media transcodes for delivery to various mobile devices
• Portuguese Language Support - For our Latin American and European friends, Portuguese is now a language option.

Kyte Player Enhancements

• Channel Changer – Header text links can now be used to change the channel, allowing users to browse to content on other channels (such as a Fan channel)

• Clickable Channel Logo – Partners can add a hyperlink to their channel logo that directs users to any destination

• Load Performance Improvements – Player components are loaded on an as-needed basis and caching is improved to reduce initial load times.

Server Enhancements

• Performance optimizations, stability improvments, and support for increased server load.

We hope you enjoy these new features and welcome all feedback on how we can continue to improve the Kyte experience for you and your fans.

Thank you!