Tag Archives: video

Over a year ago, Tivo and RIM announced an app for Blackberry and it’s finally here. I wish I still had the Blackberry Tour to play with this app a little. I’m a devout Tivo user.

The app allows BlackBerry users with a TiVo box to access their program guide and remotely schedule recording. Yep, it’s a scheduling app. If you expected to be able to watch videos, that isn’t coming any time soon. I’ve learned when trying to export my own Tivo’d shows that most of the shows are copyprotected and not exportable, even if I’m just trying to watch them on my mobile phone.

Screenshots from Boy Genius.

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I think it’s pretty clear that we here at bub.blicio.us like online video, but TurnHere is proving that video can do more for you (and your business) than you may know. Although, it is useful for covering topics like office style.

In just a year and a half, TurnHere has produced a whopping 20,000 videos for businesses in a range of industries including travel, publishing, local, and real estate. The company leverages its growing network of more than 8,000 professional filmmakers across more than 70 countries to create affordable Internet videos.

Many small businesses are turning to online video to stand out with customers. With its measurable ability to build trust and create consumer action, video is one of the best (and most affordable) ways to meaningfully engage with potential and current customers.

In fact, Kelsey Group research shows of people who viewed a video online:
•55% visited the company’s web site
•30% visited the physical store
•24% made a purchase

So, to celebrate their milestone, TurnHere has launched the “Fall in Love With Video” sweepstakes. If you have a small business – pay attention!

Here’s how it works:

• The campaign started August 31 and runs until September 25. Each week, TurnHere randomly selects 100 winners to receive a free custom video profile of their business shot onsite and produced by one of TurnHere’s professional filmmakers.

• Additionally, one winner each week will receive a $1,000 “Stimulus Package” giftcard to a leading retailer such as Costco, Best Buy, Staples, and Walmart.

Check out the video below for details and go here to enter: www.FallinLoveWithVideo.com

Good luck!

Disclosure: In addition to being a contributor to bub.blicio.us, I also work at FutureWorks where one of my clients is TurnHere, but that doesn’t make this contest any less cool.

Plenty of people still view social media as a fad, yet this informative video by Socialnomics yields plenty of surprising stats that will make the naysayers stand up and take notice. Social media has shifted the way we communicate and the numbers behind Facebook, Twitter, YouTube and others tell the honest truth.

Socialnomics, a blog covering the latest trends in social media, is the brainchild of founder and author Erik Qualman who has penned a book by the same name. Take a look at the video and there are some figures that might surprise you — I know they surprised me.

Google’s Chrome initiatives have been a major topic of interest given Google’s long term goals to incorporate as many of its products into intertwined, revenue-generating aspects of its company. But what about all the other browser add-ons that have long since known what Google is going after with so much browser integration?

VideoSurf is the latest to create a browser add-on that seeks to add value to what we already experience on the web. The newly released VideoSurf Firefox extension offers videos at a glance, giving you the ability to see what’s behind shortened URL video links, among other things (download it here).

But let’s talk about the shortened URL preview option, considering the buzz that’s been going around today about Tr.im dead-pooling and the concerns it’s brought up regarding the Twitter third party app market. Shortened URLs are among the easiest ways to spread spam and malware around social media sites such as Twitter, giving VideoSurf the attractive feature for seeing what’s behind the shortened URL before clicking on it. If you already have Firefox then you’re able to see the full URL behind a shortened URL, but VideoSurf’s Firefox extension takes things a step further by giving you a video summary complete with the video title and a thumbnail.

Some other highlights of VideoSurf’s new browser add-on include Google and Yahoo search enhancements, giving you additional video results based on your initial query. VideoSurf results pull from Hulu, and Fancast, among others. Hover your mouse over the search results thumbnails and you’ll see a short preview of the video.

This is an interesting search enhancement, given Google’s own video search results, which are often separate from the main search results, as well as Yahoo, which has recently teamed up with Microsoft, adding to some of the multimedia results already present on Microsoft’s latest project, Bing.

But for some added Google search result enhancements, VideoSurf also perks up your YouTube queries as well. Based on searches performed on YouTube, VideoSurf will also give you results from other sites across the web. If you’d like to see full-episode web clips for certain queries, this particular feature is right up your alley.

Admittedly, some browser extensions can be overwhelming and annoying, especially those that act automatically based on something as basic and as frequent as web searches. To curb any hatred towards its new Firefox extension, VideoSurf has made its tool pretty customizable so you can turn it off and on with one click, and pick and choose which features you’d like to use for your personal preferences.

Of course, VideoSurf is pretty niche in its service offerings, and you’re only going to appreciate this tool if you’re a video junkie (I actually do know a few of those). Nevertheless, I tend to appreciate the browser approach towards solving certain problems. VideoSurf has selected some handy features for its new Firefox extension.

Taking a page from Google’s playbook, Hulu today launched Hulu Labs. According to Hulu, the Labs are “a place to try out experimental projects … and share your feedback while they’re still in development.”

It’s a great idea, and they started big.

Hulu Desktop: Hulu has taken video viewing out of the browser and onto the desktop. With native applications built for Mac and for PC, you can now use Windows Media Center remote controls or Apple remote controls, allowing you to navigate Hulu’s entire library with just six buttons.  It’s also handy without the remote controls. I’ve had various episodes of Kitchen Confidential playing in the background on my machine all day. Download

Video Panel Designer: Now when you embed a Hulu clip into your site, you can customize its appearance.

Recommendations: Hulu has now added recommendations based on shows you’ve watched and rated. You need to have a Hulu account to have recommendations, but they’re pretty accurate. Based on my love of quirky sitcoms, Hulu recommended 30 Rock.

Time-Based Browsing: I think this is the best of the new experimental features. You can now quickly scan videos grouped by original air date. As Hulu puts it, “whether you’re a TV junkie who remembers shows by the day of week they air, a budding media anthropologist curious to study TV’s evolution across the decades, or just a user in search of timely news clips, time-based browsing is another way to easily find more videos on Hulu.”

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