Nirvanix Launches To Compete With Amazon S3 Storage Service

As anticipated earlier this month, San Diego based Nirvanix has launched and will offer an alternative to Amazon’s S3 storage service, which is growing rapidly.

The company is positioning itself against Amazon by saying it’s easier to integrate than S3 and they offer a service level agreement to guarantee 99/9% uptime (Amazon does not offer an SLA).

Pricing is $0.18/GB/month for storage and $0.18/GB of data transferred. By comparison, Amazon charges $0.15/GB/month for storage, and $0.10/GB of data transferred in and $0.13-$0.18/GB of data transferred out.

The lack of a service level agreement at Amazon has led many startups to use it for backup purposes only, keeping primary storage under their direct control. They may find Nirvanix as an attractive alternative (and this may also give Amazon an incentive to add an SLA soon).

Nirvanix, however, is affiliated with MediaMax, which has recently gone through a hellish transition that left customers offline and furious. The connection between the two companies is going to create some marketing stress for Nirvanix as it rolls out its new service.

The company has raised $12 million in funding.

Megavideo: Does It “Beat” YouTube?

a new online video sharing site based out of Hong Kong, has YouTube in its sights. In a video on its homepage, the company claims to best YouTube for ten reasons:

1. Video publishers can earn money through a rewards program
2. Publishers can also earn money through AdBrite in-video advertisements
3. Users can move the playback position to anywhere in the video
4. The website supports twenty languages
5. The video player can be customized to match the designs of websites where you want to embed
6. There is no maximum playtime for video uploads
7. Video conversion takes no more than 30 minutes
8. Videos can be uploaded in batch
9. Original video files can be downloaded
10. Megavideo loves you more than YouTube

Since users can also move the playback position to anywhere within a video on YouTube, and the last given reason is pure filler, only eight of these advantages seem to be justifiable.

The site is notable for its lack of banner advertisements. The company appears to be aiming to generate revenue by charging people for premium features. Premium members must pay at least $10 per month, but they can upload videos up to 5GB in size and their uploads get prioritized before regular members. Also, only premium members can download videos from the site (as opposed to streaming) and earn revenue from advertisements and the Megavideo rewards program.

Megavideo is provided by the same company that created Megaupload.

Watch Megavideo’s self-proclaimed ten reasons for preferring their service to YouTube below: