Apple guru Steve Wozniak and Red McCombs, a co-founder of advertising behemoth Clear Channel, are backing an internet start-up which uses compression to improve online videos.

Currently being used to run a site for flogging secondhand cars, they believe the high quality videos can be used in various ecommerce sites. Hotswap allows you to search by car type, make, or mileage. The sellers provide the video tour of the car, which is then uploaded to the website. Hosting the video and selling the car is a free service.

Woz is an adviser to company and will "give them ideas that come into my mind", according to Reuters.

The site, founded by Luke Thomas and Ryan Waliany, also claims it is "a user generated and aggregated wisdom community".

The 20-year-old company founders were previously, and presumably briefly, students at Berkeley.

The videos are played back using Adobe's Flash. ®

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