Radbox: TiVo For Online Video Lovers [Interview]

How many times have you seen an online video, thought to yourself "I don't have time now, I'll watch it later" and completely forgotten about it? Radbox is the ultimate tool for helping online video lovers avoid this problem. The company offers a bookmarklet that lets you easily save videos from across the web and queue them up to watch them later all in one place. It's just like TiVo or Instapaper...but for online videos. I had the opportunity to ask Radbox's Co-founder and Chief Tinkerer, Aditya Sahay, a few questions about the service. Read on to find out what Aditya had to say, and learn more about Radbox. How does Radbox work? Simply create an account, log in and add the bookmarklet to your browser. You can drag the bookmarklet to your bookmarks toolbar in most browsers or right-click and add to favorites in Internet Explorer (yes, it even works in IE!). Next, just surf the web and when you see videos you'd like to save just use the bookmarklet. Radbox lets you save videos on over 70 different websites, including YouTube, Facebook, Vimeo, Hulu and more. When you want to watch the videos you've saved, you'll find them ready to queue up and watch in Radbox. Radbox also lets you save videos from iPhone and Android. According to the Radbox FAQ page, the site is called Radbox because, "'Rad' is slang for awesome, while 'box' has been taken from the 'idiot box'. 'Radbox' is the opposite of the idiot box, in the sense that it shows you videos which you really want to see (that's why you added them in the first place!)." I have to wholeheartedly agree--this service really is totally rad. Now I knew where the name came from, but I was curious about that crazy sheep logo (love it!). Co-founder and Chief Tinkerer Aditya Sahay told me, "We were inspired by the Twitter bird concept - it is not just a logo, it is something which strongly relates to the Twitter brand, spawns T-shirts and what not. We wanted some animal for our own, and when our designer showed us the sheep, we fell for it." I asked Aditya what the inspiration behind Radbox was. He told me that the inspiration came around the same time as the iPad was announced last year. "We wanted to do some consumer pay in online videos, and after brainstorming my team decided on a product which overlapped with Instapaper, Feedly and iTunes for web videos." When asked how Radbox is doing so far he told me, "Around 40,000 videos have been added so far. We have a small number of users, but their reaction is super positive. Some of our users have gone ahead and built hacks to enhance Radbox - an iPad interface, XBMC plugin, and others. This indicates a very strong level of enthusiasm for the product, which is what motivates us as a team." Aside from some of the cool hacks that Radbox users have built, Radbox is planning some exciting things of their own for the future. Aditya tells me, "The most important improvement will be mobile (iPhone, iPad) apps which we're working on for a while now. If the end result is at least 80% as good as we have visualized, users will totally love it." I look forward to seeing the end result! I'll leave you with the following video of Aditya demo-ing Radbox earlier this month at the New York Tech Meetup. Check it out and be sure to let us know what you think about Radbox in the comments! Don't have time to watch the video now? Radbox it and watch it later!

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Radbox: TiVo For Online Video Lovers [Interview]

Co-founder and Chief Tinkerer Aditya Sahay on how to save videos across the web and watch them later, TiVo style, with Radbox.

Megan O'Neill

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Megan O'Neill