In Praise of TinyOgg

The Ogg sound and video formats finally seem to be gaining some traction; the only problem is that few of the major sites employ it - Flash is pretty much ubiquitous these days. That's where TinyOgg comes in:

This service allows you to watch and listen to Flash-based videos without the need to Flash technology. This gives you speed, safety, control, freedom and openness.

And if you want more detail on the latter advantages:

Choosing Ogg over Flash is both an ethical and technical question. We all want our computers to do better, so here is how our computers are better with Free Formats:

1. You will be able to enjoy the media "natively"; there is no need to install any plug-in or add-on to your standard-friendly browser.

2. You will not need to load heavy and possibly unsafe scripts, which helps with speed and stability.

3. You will support a free, open Web where no corporation monopolizes an important technology, such as video.

4. You will enjoy more control over your digital life with Free Formats and Open Standards because no corporation decides what you can and cannot do with the files you have.

If you're wondering how they can afford to host all the stuff, the answer is, they don't:

All videos on TinyOgg are hosted for 48 hours. We believe that most users are going to watch the video only once, so there is no need to the "for-ever hosting" feature, which is going to be costly.

However, you can download the converted files and view them at your leisure. Recommended.

Follow me @glynmoody on Twitter or identi.ca.