GeoBeats is an interactive media website for informing travelers about international destinations through the use of video. It is a place where you can watch free short videos on international destinations that highlight history, culture, shopping, food, nightlife, lifestyle, and other aspects of interest to travelers. GeoBeats is US based and has a development center in Delhi, which is headed by Vishesh Bajaj, who previously worked with TCS.

The site is a travelogue and it tries to bring out the essence of different tourist destinations through the use of an audio-visual medium (video) than the textual information that comes with travel brochures and pamphlets. Check out this brilliant video of the Paranthewali Gali (famous for Indian bread ‘paranthas’) in Chandni Chowk in New Delhi. Or this one about the Khardung La Pass in Leh, which is one of the highest motorable roads of the world.

The videos are different than other travel videos in many aspects. For starters, they are not amateur videos; rather, they are shot by professionals filmmakers and hence the content is well researched. Also, the videos have a ‘down to earth’ feel as opposed to a heavy commercial angle. Every video has a host, who walks you through the place of interest; this adds a unique and personal flavor. Viewers can actually relate to the host through his/her distinctive style. Thus this is a fun yet reliable way to learn about your next international destination.

The site’s creators feel that while there is no dearth of travel websites, the information available there is presented in a very impersonal and commercial way. As international travel is becoming more affordable, people spend fairly significant amounts of time and money planning for their trips. That’s the segment the website is trying to address.

The website is brilliantly designed. It has a very simple interface. And you can also embed the videos into your own blog//website. You can check out their blog for other travel related tid-bits.

The site has just launched and I am still waiting for Vishesh to email me details about their future plans, their revenue model etc. But I don’t want to deprive Webyantra’s readers of this cool website because of those boring details (I’ll update the post later with those). Till then, check out their SUPERB video collection and get transported to the destination. Happy Travelling!

IndianShutter is an image content portal where amateurs, hobbyists or professional photographers can upload and sell their photographs. Its like an online marketplace for stock images, much like GettyImages and Corbis. With the difference, that this is meant exclusively for Indian digital content. The site is aiming to become the favored destination on the web for searching/buying India specific image content.

IndianShutter is based out of Mumbai and is run by this four member team. The rationale behind the site is hard to deny. There has always been a market for professional photographic content amongst people who work with images; eg – graphic designers, web designers, DTP professionals, Ad agencies, magazines/publications, travel sites etc. IndianShutter will enable those same transactions to happen via the web.

So here’s how it will actually work- photographers can create an account and upload their images on the site. They can upload images of various sizes or resolutions, but with a minimum 300 DPI (below which stock images don’t sell much). The buyers don’t get to see the actual images; only thumbnails and low-res watermarked previews are displayed. Once a buyer confirms the purchase after making the payment, a download link is emailed across, which remains live for 48 hours. The website scrutinizes each image for quality parameters besides content integrity, copyright etc before they accept it for sale. It takes app 48 working hours for each such approval.

The site offers its basic service free but there is a premium account as well. The difference is that for the free version, the photographer cannot specify the price for the image uploaded. And he gets 20% of the revenue from each sale while the rest goes to the site. For premium accounts, the photographer has the liberty to specify his own price. The revenue in this case is split equally. Additionally, the sale of the images can be exclusive or non exclusive. In the former, all rights of the image pass on to the buyer and the image is removed from the site after the transaction. In non exclusive sale, the same image can be sold repeatedly to different customers. Off course the exclusive sale price is much higher than the non exclusive one.

Indian Shutter hopes to eventually spawn an online community for photographers and become a hub of activity, involving yellow pages classifieds, skill enhancement tools, knowledge sharing etc for photographers. They also plan to introduce higher order features like photo blogging, citizen photo journalism et al. Also on the cards is the capability to push & pull images through mobile devices.

It seems like a good beginning to me. The site’s overall design is fairly good. And it has a clearly defined revenue model, the bugbear of most online applications. Time will tell if they are able to capitalize on their first mover advantage and become the default destination for Indian image content on the web.