Competition Reminder

Just to remind you that the competiton to win my top ten CDs and more USB batteries closes on November 30th 2006. There will then be two Christmas competitions for you all to enter, more details to follow soon!

Song of the Day – America by Razorlight

To be totally honest, not a big Razorlight fan, but this song has got to me.

Razorlight is an Anglo-Swedish band formed during the summer of 2002 around 22-year-old singer-songwriter Johnny Borrell.

Head to Razorlight’s website for more information.

How do you like your bacon?

Lean back. After all the set-up and agonising wait, you’d think you’d do a bit better than this eh? It’s a cruel game.

The art of speed stacking

I’ve previously posed the question “What constitues a sport?” and someone pointed me in the direction of speed stacking.

What is speed stacking, you may well ask? You may have already guessed – that it’s stacking things, mainly cups, at speed. The Speed Stacks website (apparently the leader in sport stacking) can show you footage of it from ESPN. Don’t get me started. Also you can buy some cups, should you so wish. In an apparent attempt to win the record for the world’s longest domain name, the World Sport Stacking Association provides details of tournaments near you and tries to standardise the rules and regulations.

For your enjoyment, Emily Fox’s world record cup stacking time of 7.43 seconds. Pretty impressive, and also handy for clearing up the kitchen.

4 more easy steps to getting your videos online

In a previous post looking at 4 easy steps to getting your videos online, I looked at 4 of the major players in the online video sharing market – YouTube, Google Video, Metacafe and Soapbox. In this post I’m going to look at some other sites that I missed out, and try to spend less time on the sign-up process. Unlike the previous sites, most of these sites are not general video sharing sites, but a mixture of an attempt to create custom “channels” where a user can create an online presence with a series of videos or episodes, or social networking sites, with video at their core.

Revver, Blip, Brightcove, MyHeavy and Vimeo have all been mentioned to me as alternatives, so let’s spend some time taking a look.

Step 1: Find your video

For ease of comparison I once again chose the short (13 seconds, 3.5MB) video of the Amalfi Coast, between Positano and Amalfi.

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Step 2: Create an account

What initially seemed easy, turned out to be a little less straightforward. Because of the revenue sharing opportunities that Revver are developing there was a fair bit more information they needed from you, such as paypal information, agreement to various distribution options, and your address. There were further optional questions too. I would prefer they asked me those questions later.

Incredibly easy and took less than 10 seconds.

A relatively lengthly sign-up process, requiring an address and phone number.

Easy, with optional entries for your cellphone or Instant Messenger ID for future updates.

They say sign up only takes 10 seconds, but they’re wrong. It takes about 8. Nice and easy.

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Step 3: Upload the video

Using a flash based interface this gave a nice progress indicator. I was unsure if I could leave to browse around the site, so I tried it and although I lost the progress indicator it soon appeared in my dashboard. [Incidentally, I really liked the dashboard on Revver, which shows your earnings, message inbox and so on]. Adding the usual title, description and keywords, there was also a selection for audience using the American ratings classification, PG-13, NC-17 etc. Revver then makes you wait in order for their Video Patrol team to review the video.

A nice visual editor for the description box made a nice change, with the ability to add images and HTML if you wish. You could also upload your own thumbnail image, choose a copyright license, content rating (bespoke), and some optional fields regarding distribution. Despite all the options I found it to be simple and intuitive. Uploading once again gives a progress bar, with an indication of transfer rate. It also suggests some other features of the site, which for a newbie was quite interesting (such as the ability to upload via FTP and directly from Windows Movie Maker) but I doubt of much use for a regular user. However after clicking on one of these I then hit a problem – where was the video I uploaded? Honestly I couldn’t find it, it seems that navigating away from the page interrupts the upload. I ended up re-uploading the same video, waiting until it had been uploaded and then using the options I was then presented with.

Brightcove is more of a corporate solution where branding and photos (as well as videos) can be uploaded, called “Assets”. Like vPod, Brightcove attempts to enable businesses and individuals to create their own personal TV channels. Upload requires either a Quick Upload plugin or a separate piece of software called Publishpod, which is quite odd as they whole site is Flash based and an uploader could have easily been built in. Videos have to already be in Flash format, or Windows Media Video for Pay Media downloads. As this meant that I could no longer compare this site to other sites, I didn’t upload the video and didn’t continue with Brightcove. Not rated.

[Update: I received the following info in an email from Brightcove: "...the Publishpod can be used to both encode videos from various formats into Flash and upload files to your account. Only the Quick Upload plugin requires the videos to be previously encoded." However the Publishpod still requires a separate download and install which no other site requires.]

This was as easy as any of the other sites, although I was forced to select a category which, although may fit with the overall themes of the site, none of them fit with my test video. A pop-up window shows the progress of the upload, allowing you to continue to use the site and upload another video if you want. Closing the window aborts the upload. Nice and simple.

Very simple like the others, a progress bar informs you of the, er, progress. Vimeo has a weekly limit of 30MBs for videos which may be too constraining for a lot of people. A nice big “watch it” link appears to avoid confusion. The video appears in it’s native format to begin with (.avi through Windows Media Player), but is converted to flash in the background.

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Step 4: View the video

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Overall

Pros: Nice interface. Probably the best video quality in this test.
Cons: A long wait to see video online, although may have been due to uploading problems.

Pros: Integrated video blogging platform, choice of video formats.
Cons: A few too many options and no warning on interrupting uploads so a person with a small brain like me has problems.

Pros: Fast Flash interface, plenty of options.
Cons: Less of a video sharing site and more of a social networking site. Low video quality.

Pros: Quick to join, easy to upload and available immediately.
Cons: Low video quality – arguably worse than MyHeavy.

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Final thoughts

Go here for a comparison of the video quality of all 8 video sharing sites from this article and the previous article.

Video quality was overall much poorer that the 4 big sites. Several sites took too long to process/approve the video. Previously Metacafe users decided not to approve my video (I got an email to say it was too boring, I must have missed that in the t&c’s….), and although that was later rectified I wonder whether reviewing solutions like this are scaleable if a site gets truly popular? Blip did a nice job of trying to integrate video publishing, blogging and various other tools such as del.ico.us and Flickr. Their video was available immediately (after I figured out the upload “problem”), in flash format or the original source (.avi) and in the latter the quality was the same as source (which I imagine it should be!). MyHeavy attempts to be more of a social networking site and to some degree succeeds, although I’m no expert.

All the sites had some small niggle with them (such as the adding of keywords where there seems to be no standard for how to enter these – do you separate them with a space or a comma? Use quotation marks for phrases? Are you allowed 3, 5 or unlimited keywords?), but these are probably personal and subjective.

Other sites such as Eyespot and Daily Motion confirms that at the moment there seems no stopping the rise of online video sharing sites, there is a wealth to choose from. Which one to choose is probably based on what you need it for. YouTube is the most popular (and will probably stay so with the merge with Google Video), but also one with the most “competition”. Revver and Metacafe allow you to share revenue if that is what you want, MyHeavy and Blip are more integrated social networking sites, and Soapbox has the highest video quality (in my opinion), but is only a small marketplace at the moment. Please, let me know your thoughts.

An alternative Christmas shopping guide

As Christmas approaches, whatever religion you are, you may be buying gifts for family and friends. More and more people are using the internet to do all their Christmas shopping. I, for one, never expect to pass the threshold into an actual shop to buy my presents.

However are we limited to the likes of eBay and Play online? Well both yes and no. There are lots of sites out there willing to sell us stuff and those two are pretty good at it with cheap prices and reliability. But what I’m going to cover here is some alternatives to the main shops. Call it an early Christmas present if you like.

Give yourself something

Sites such as Quidco and ipoints give a percentage of your purchase back to you if you click through links on their site. Quidco does it on the form of cash – say 3% back on a transaction and then every so often it will give you a payment via Paypal. They charge £5 a year though. ipoints give you points instead of cash and you can earn points other ways than just buying stuff. Surveys, insurance quotes etc all give you points and then points of course mean prizes. There’s also Pigsback and Rpoints which are similar. Remember you can usually only use one of these at a time though so pick which is best for you.

Codes are the key

Hunt around not just for the cheapest price which I’m sure you do anyway, but for discount codes and vouchers. Some sites I use are Hot UK Deals, Free Stuff Junction and DVD Reviewer’s Bargain Buckets forum. All can have links to vouchers and give you a heads-up on deals. There’s also a dedicated site to voucher codes which is worth checking before you purchase anything.

Go green

I’ve written about Green Metropolis before and they are really good for books. Or try The Natural Collection. From vegan condoms (!) to hemp tights, it’s full of gift ideas. Likewise is SoOrganic which has a Christmas shop open now.

And the WWF is both green and for charity – how socially conscious can you get?

Charity shops

Speaking of charity, if you are going to go into a shop, a charity shop is a good place to start. Oxfam do a range of new things so you don’t have to get your sister a 1983 Top of the Pops yearbook. However, online a great place is Macmillan Cancer Support. Yes, there’s some random stuff – a golf glove or dog tea cosy anyone? – but there’s some nice gift ideas, Macmillan branded stuff and the chance to give a donation as a gift.

Barter

eBay may be the leader in auction sites but there are other similar places out there. Iswap, eBid, Myswap, Swapperscorner and Swapz are all vying for eBay’s crown and you could pick up some bargains. You can even try the police.

And finally

Yes, Play may not be always the cheapest anymore (try this to compare prices on DVDs and this for CDs) but like Amazon, Play now has a market place so there may be hope after all. Unlike Amazon all Playtrade sellers offer free delivery too.

And check out Money Saving Expert’s guide to Christmas too.

A scammer’s meal

There’s a section where you can see other people who have baited the scammers too, but I wouldn’t try it myself. Mike Berry (aka Shiver Metimbers) has received death threats. Thanks for doing it for us Mike!

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