SUN Learning Exchange

It was great to see how my friend Jay Cross already wrote on the SUN Learning Exchange.





http://slx.sun.com/

I am proud that Veodia is enabling SUN's informal learning initiatives through the SUN Learning Exchanges. SUN employees uses Veodia to record and share videos of critical information needed to improve knowledge transfer and collaboration, allowing them access to the right information at the right time.

More information in the press release.

E.T.

Veodia

One of my long time interests is multimedia. During past and current role, as well as private life, I keep monitoring this topic.

During this week, it was hard to miss the vibe around Veodia.

I first saw their offering during the office2.0 event last year. Veodia provided the video recording of the event. See:

This week Veodia announced their Flash Widget.

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From Veodia press release:

“…
Veodia is a browser-based video service leveraging the new capabilities of Adobe Flash Player 9, allowing its users to create and stream their own crystal clear videos to millions of Adobe Flash players. With just a video camera, Internet connection and a Veodia account, users can easily broadcast live and record MPEG-4 / h.264 video from their browser. Veodia eliminates the need for expensive investments in encoding, streaming and distribution technology. All content created with or imported to the Veodia broadcasting service can be played back in native h.264 format with the latest version of Adobe Flash Player 9.

"Veodia decided over two years ago to build its core technology around the h.264 standard because of its superior quality and multi-device compatibility. When Adobe announced support for h.264 in the Adobe Flash Player it confirmed that we had made the right decision for our customers. Now in addition to viewing content in Quicktime, on 3G phones, iPhones, televisions and hundreds of other MPEG-4/h.264 compatible devices, our users can playback their Veodia content using Flash Player," said Guillaume Cohen, CEO, Veodia.

In addition, the new Veodia channel widget offers a more interactive navigation interface based on Adobe Flash technology, allowing viewers to browse through all videos published on a channel. See the new flash widget in action with a video message from Veodia's CEO at: http://www.veodia.com/flashdemo.
…”)

Latest buzz:

• Flash Player Released!
• Veodia Browser-Based h.264 Video Service Adds Native Flash Player ...

• Veodia Now Supports Flash
• Veodia ditching Quicktime for Flash, HD to come in 2009
• Veodia ups the video ante
• Veodia Now Supports Flash
• Exploiting Flash
• Veodia - the live TV studio in your browser
• High-def video service Veodia gets Flash compatibility » VentureBeat
• Broadcast your live Video now...

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Like many, I believe in "simple is better". But most of the "simple" solutions are usually have a "price". In addition, you can choose two out of these three: Good/Cheap/Fast.

The video recording quality using Veodia is amazing ( just make sure you are not filming in the dark using your 4 years old 0.5MP web cam and a mic you stolen from your kids - see my demo bellow ). The encoding is fast. And as I still using the free account, it is cheap (but I am sure their pricing model will be very good as well).

These capabilities show great potential.
From Corporate communications and education, through security, entertainment and v/blogs - Cost effective, high quality video and scalable platform providing great foundations to all new type of applications.

So - check Veodia's capabilities and no not forget to have fun as well.







E.T.

Technorati Tags: HD,multimedia,video, Veodia

Rebooting My Morning

I was on my way to the Momentum Growth Conference today when I had to stop for fuel.


The fuel pump had this kind of media screen and it showed commercials.

Suddenly, the screen went black the and the computer rebooted - and froze.




Great start...

(I am glad to use a Mac...)

:-)

E.T.

Adobe Flex Prototypes

I am working on some prototypes using Adobe Flex (again).

The applications I'm prototyping merge information from several systems and hopefully would have a cool UI...

Adobe Flex has a great 'out of the box' containers, controllers and other layout capabilities, which make it a great tool for building these type of applications.

As you can imagine, some custom containers are required to enhance the basic capabilities and experiences.

Many good people are creating these components and sharing/selling them.
For example, the Adobe Flex Exchange, Andrew Trice Blog and Quietly Scheming (as shown).



I am using the Flex Style Explorer to create and test CSS play with visuals ideas.

Back to Flex syntax now...

E.T.

Technorati Tags Adobe, Air, Flex, multimedia, photo
, prototype

In-video Search and Ads

I would like to share with you some thoughts and questions I had during the “Under The Radar Entertainment and Media” Conference yesterday.

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Notes:

There is a need for in-video search capabilities, both for people and for business. For people – it will allow finding relevant movies from large catalogs and aggregated sites, and even easy navigation to a specific frame within these movies. For business – it will allow a new type of monetization models on top of user-generated-content.

Some of the issues related to ads within Internet-videos (pre-roll, mid-roll, post-roll) are very similar to mainstream TV. People do not like ads and would skip them if they have a chance. I know I skip them by using Tivo. (I learned that there are already tools for skipping ads within these movies as well…)
Some ads are not related to the show or even the show content is harmful to the marketed brand.

Most companies I saw so far are using Adobe Flash as the delivery format. Using Flash allows merging the movies and the ads into one experience. The main experience I saw so far were textual ads Vs. multimedia ads (a movie within a movie). Encapsulated experience (the information is presented within the player) Vs. Open experience (the ads send the viewer to a Webpage).

Another trend is developing the ads using an ‘ad market place’ where creative professionals and amateurs ‘compete’ on advertisements projects.

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My thoughts:

• Advertising within content (video, feeds, etc.) becomes more relevant as the content available via many portals (destination sites).
• People will continue to skip ads (manually or with some help from independent technologies) while advertisers will continue to push their messages across channels.
• Advertisement agencies leverage creativity from many sources, with a low cost.
• How can content producers be compensated for their content when it been used as a marketing vehicle?
• From “Who own the channel?” to “Who own the clip?”
  

An interesting example for an ad from my friend Craig Cmehil:

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is the new interesting in-video company I saw.
(http://www.pluggd.com/)
With a very interesting text search capability, based on the audio track analysis, as well as "heat map" navigation concept for the scrollbar.
(And again… where was I…)


E.T.

Technorati Tags video, event, marketing, multimedia, undertheradar

Video Sharing with eSnips / or how eSnips saved my day/face

Today I received an eMail from a friend, asking for my help posting/hosting two, 12 minutes long, training videos, produced by her company.

“You know this stuff, it should not be a problem for you” she wrote. “What the problem?” I replied, “Just YouTube them …”

As it seems, YouTobe as well as other sites I checked has a 10 minutes length limit. (I guess it has good reasons for that, mainly due to copyrights and people posting TV shows…)

“Send me the files using yousendit and I will cut them into shorter movies” I suggested. (Being as productive and lazy as possible, at the same time). “No” she replied, “We tried that, but the movies have to be presented as is”.

So I had to find another solution.

One option was to simply convert the movies from WMV to FLV and upload them to my friend’s site. But I did not have the right tool installed (yet), due to my recent switch to Mac. I also wanted the movies to play within a player (to allow play, stop, rewind and other operations).


So – back to posting/hosting/sharing solutions…

Recently I learned that videoegg have a great interface, allowing you to edit and convert movies on your local machine before uploading them to their site. I created an account, downloaded the Safari plug in and gave it a try. The process was fast and fun. The only problem was that a water-mark of flip4mac was added to the exported movie… WTF?!

I know they have a great video encoders and converters – but I was not expecting to see this. What good is the videoegg plug-in if it does not provide a complete solution? Should I pay for the convector? Does this really save me time?

Anyway – after a cup of coffee I decided to address this issue not as “video posting” challenge but as a content sharing challenge. I thought about online services I use to host my data.

I’ve checked box.net, but my free account does not allow me to upload files larger than 10mb…

And then I remembered that I am using another site to host a verity of files and formats. eSnips is a content/community portal and service. eSnips supports many content types.






Full of hope, I’ve logged in to my account and set a new public folder. I’ve uploaded the two 90Mb WMV files within few minutes and...

Success!!!

I’ve used the video widget to embed the movies within the eSnips player and send the code to my friend.

As a bonus – the WMV files were converted automatically to FLV, so I could download them for future use.

Talk about a great service!
;-)

So this is how, by the end of the day, I helped my friend and mained my “multimedia guru” reputation.
(At least with her…)

E.T.


PS – This is a movie, demonstrating some of the service features, I found on eSnips.








Technorati Tags multimedia, eSnips, FLV, WMV