Vodpod Blog

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Just another WordPress.com weblog

July 13, 2009 • 1:32 pm 0

Using the Vodpod Organizer to Publish a Set of Videos

Our Organizer is a really powerful tool if you want to quickly curate a set of videos to publish to a widget, VodSpot, or a video site powered by our API.

From your Vodpod home page, click the “organize your videos” link. This will bring up the organizer:

organizer

You can then use the organizer to quickly assemble a set of videos from your collection. Just shift + click to select the videos you want (or use search to refine your list first). Once you have selected the videos you want, you can then give them a specific tag (or tags), or move them into a separate collection.

Then, just setup a widget based on those tags (or, create a VodSpot module that points to those tags).

Filed under: Basics, FAQs, For Your Blog, Publishing Tools, Tips, Tricks, Hacks

June 2, 2009 • 7:40 pm 0

Post Videos to Your Blog with Vodpod

Our Vodpod browser button not only helps you collect videos on Vodpod from over thousands of different sites; it’s also handy for posting videos to your blog (we support WordPress, Typepad, Blogger, Tumblr) or Twitter or Facebook.

Get the button here if you haven’t installed it.

When you first use the button, you’ll need to choose the blogging platform you want to use:

post_to_blog_choose_platform

The first time you use the “Post to Blog” service you’ll need to enter your blog credentials (username and password and blog URL) .

post_to_blog

Write your post and hit publish and you’re done. Simple.

If you want to simply save the post as a draft, or control other attributes, click the “send to my editor” link and then edit your post using using your blog editor.

You can also click the “Get the code” link to grab the embed code and paste into your blog (this is especially handy for WordPress.com bloggers, as we create a short code for the video). That’s also a handy way to grab multiple videos for a single post.

Filed under: For Your Blog, Publishing Tools, Tips, Tricks, Hacks

May 29, 2009 • 8:38 pm 0

The New Vodpod WordPress Theme and Autoblog

Tomorrow is the 4th WordCamp (I was a proud attendee of the first, in August 2006) and in honor of that we’re launching two new services:

1. A special new WordPress theme built just for video bloggers, and deeply integrated with Vodpod. You can see an initial version of it in action now, on our GeekBlog. You can get the theme now, right here, from Press75.

2. Our new auto-blog service, which lets you automatically publish videos you collect on Vodpod to your blog. This works, as of today, with any WordPress, Blogger or Typepad blog.

The new theme was developed in partnership with Press75 and the talented Jason Schuller. At Press75, Jason has created some of the most popular premium WordPress themes for video bloggers. This new theme is elegant, FREE, open source, and is, we hope, the beginning of a trend.

It may be the perfect way for video bloggers to share their favorite videos from the web.

First, it makes adding a video dead-simple, fast, easy, and painless. It takes just a click to post the video — Vodpod grabs the embed code, makes the thumbnail, and post this all to the WordPress blog where is displayed effortlessly and elegantly in the new theme.

Second, the theme itself is a beautiful and elegant way to show off videos you think are interesting or relevant. A horizontal video strip at the top allows visitors to watch the a featured set of videos (you can define the set by tag).

In the main column, you can intermingle text posts with video posts. When you post a video, text commentary wraps naturally around the thumbnail — no more clunky looking embeds cluttering the page. Clicking on a thumbnail plays the video in a nice widescreen lightbox; you’re freed from the constraints of narrow columns designed primarily for text display. Clicking on a title lets you watch on a specific page for the video, where you can do all the things you’d want to do on a blog — read the accompanying commentary, rate the video, or comment on the video.

With this new video-centric theme, you still get all of the capabilities you’d expect with a WordPress blog — great publishing features, support for a wide array of widgets on the sidebar, inclusion of advertising if you want that. It’s still rough in places, and we will work with Jason to refine and improve the theme over the coming weeks. But we think this is an exciting glimpse at how a WordPress blog can leverage the capabilities of Vodpod (and vice versa).

The second announcement is more under the hood, but also important for both bloggers and theme developers. You can now set up Vodpod to publish directly to your blog. To set this up, just log in to your Vodpod account, click the “blog autopost” link under “Share and Publish.” All you need to do is enter your blog credentials, and we’ll post videos automagically to your blog when you collect on Vodpod (this is our blog importer, in reverse).

Again, if you are a blogger who likes to post videos, you’ll find this an incredibly simple and powerful tool. And the best way to get videos onto your blog. Period. Just one click to get the video both into Vodpod and onto your blog.

This is also important for theme developers. Because we provide the title, text, embed code and a thumbnail (and, we can even more data), theme developers can now build new kinds of video-centric themes that leverage the simplicity and power of Vodpod to make more dynamic, elegant video-centric themes. If you’re interested in that, and working with us, please be in touch.

Filed under: For Your Blog, Publishing Tools

May 27, 2009 • 10:00 am 2

How do I setup my WordPress.com Widget?

WordPress.com is a great, free blogging platform. Scott and I both use it for our personal blogs.

Happily for WordPress.com users, our Vodpod widget is built in as a sidebar widget. Here are the steps to add and then configure your Vodpod widget on WordPress.com:

First, login to WordPress.com, click “Appearance” and then “Widgets.”

You’ll see a menu of WordPress.com widgets. They’re organized alphabetically, so scroll down to the bottom, and then drag the Vodpod Videos widget over to your sidebar area.

(This video does a nice job showing you how to add a widget to your WordPress.com blog sidebar).

Then, just paste the code provided at Vodpod.com for your widget into the form and click the “Save” button and your done.

Instructions on how to get the right code from Vodpod.com for your widget are here.

Filed under: For Your Blog, Publishing Tools, Tips, Tricks, Hacks

May 19, 2009 • 12:36 pm 2

New (beta!) feature – blog autoposting

In our continuing efforts to help people get more out of their videos collections at Vodpod, I’m working on a new auto-publish feature. This will automatically publish videos you collect to your blog.

This feature is not formally released or supported yet, but if you want to try it out and send me feedback I’d be happy to get it. You can reach the setup page here:

http://vodpod.com/account/widgets/blog_autopost

Filed under: For Your Blog, Publishing Tools, Tips, Tricks, Hacks

April 7, 2009 • 2:31 pm 0

Introducing the Vodpod Widescreen Player

We’re really excited to introduce our latest deceptively simple but powerfully fun widget, the Widescreen Player. Instead of a bunch of blah-blah-blah here, how about we just show it to you:

Just click the “Widescreen” link above to see it in action.

The widget opens a lightbox, and plays the video in the largest format we can given your screen resolution and your browser window size. We also provide “Related Videos” — either from the entire Vodpod.com collection, or your Vodpod collection (if you’re a member). In the example above, we’re pulling Related Videos from our Vodpod Pod video collection.

If you want, you can run ads next to the video on the “Related Videos.” That’s defaulted off, but you can turn it on when you configure the widget (just choose “Yes” where it asks, “Show Ads”).

To install this, you can simply grab the code here if you’re not a Vodpod user; or here if you are. It literally requires inserting two lines of javascript on your blog (and be installed with precisely 3 clicks if you are a Blogger or Typepad user).

If you’re not currently a Vodpod member, and you want to control the Related Videos, we’ve made it super-easy and simple to sign up and import your video collection from your blog to Vodpod. You can literally have the Widescreen Player up and running in minutes, with the Related Videos displaying links to videos you’ve previously posted on your blog.

It’s brand new, and while we’ve been testing it out here for a couple of weeks, we’re sure we’ll encounter bugs and other issues in the wild. So be in touch, let us know what you think and tell us what’s not working.

Filed under: For Your Blog, Publishing Tools

• 1:49 pm 2

Advertising on Vodpod Widgets

Want to make a little cash with your Vodpod widget on your blog? Setting up the advertising on your widget couldn’t be easier. Go to your Vodpod home page (vodpod.com/account, you’ll need to be logged in). Click the appropriate link to configure your widget under “Share and Publish” (sorry, this doesn’t work on WordPress.com blogs as they prohibit advertising) and then: 1. Go the the “Video Window Setup” and select “Popup (includes ad)” style widget_popup_config 2. Enter your Google Adsense ID adsense_widget_popup_config We share the ad inventory 50/50. On 50% of video views from your widget, we’ll run ads in the popup window credited to your Google Adsense account; the other 50% of the time we’ll run ads credited to our Adsense account. It’s that simple (and save us from doing a ton of accounting and paperwork!). We’ll add support in the coming months for other advertising platforms — we’d like to hear from you what platforms we should support. We also plan to provide a “Pro” feature that allows you to control a higher percentage of the advertising inventory. Stay tuned for more details on that.

Filed under: For Your Blog, Publishing Tools

February 10, 2009 • 6:39 pm 0

Tweetie Pod

We love Twitter.

We built in support for Twitter back when Vodpod was just a few weeks old and Twitter had been public a mere four to five months. You can read recriprocal posts on the Twitter blog and Vodpod blog.

That initial service — which automatically sent a tweet whenever you added a video using Vodpod — has more or less existed ever since. But we know some people want more pinpoint control — they don’t want to send a tweet every time they collect a video.

So we’ve just added a simple new way to send a tweet about a video when you use our bookmark button (you can also use the “Share” functionality on any video page on Vodpod). It makes it incredibly easy to share a video with just three quick clicks. Here is how it works.

1. You’re surfing the Net, and you see a video you want to collect, or Tweet, or both. So you click the Share Videos button on your browser (more here if you’re a newbie) and choose the “Post to Site” tab:

2. You’re a Twitterer, so you click the Twitter button (the first time you do this, we’ll need you to enter your Twitter username and password):

3. And then type in your Tweet. We give you a handy character count, and you don’t have to worry about getting a shortened URL — we do that for you!

So, just three clicks to let your friends know about a video you like. No fuss about copying URLs or getting a shortened URL. Simple, eh?

Twitterers, please give it a try and let us know if there is anything we could do to make it better.

Oh, if you’re a Twitterer, be sure to follow us.

Filed under: Collecting Tools, For Your Blog, News

June 10, 2008 • 12:35 am 0

Vodpod Loves Your Blog, Let Us Count the Ways

If you’re a blogger, and regularly include video on your blog, you need to hook it up with Vodpod.

We can think of at least eight reasons why Vodpod and your blog are made for each other:

1. Widgets
Our fabulous widgets are a great way to share video via your blog. Your readers can browser through and watch your video collection from the comfort of your blog (whether it’s a collection of 5, 50 or 500 videos). We’ve got a full array of shapes, sizes, and configurations, and we’ve just announced a few more. And you can build your own if you like, with our API or our widget source code.

2. Blog Importer
We have some simple but powerful ways to collect videos, but among the most relevant for bloggers is our blog importer. It’s particularly useful if you already have a workflow for posting videos to your blog; all you have to do is enter your blog’s RSS feed, and we’ll add the videos you post to your collection on Vodpod automatically.

3. Post to Blog with Our Browser Button
Our orange browser button lets you save videos to your Vodpod collection with a click, from 1000s of sites. But sometimes you might want to post a video, too, not just share it through our widget. You can use our browser button to do that, too. With just a click, post a video to your blog; works on WordPress, Typepad, Blogger, Twitter and Tumblr. We also have a special version for WordPress.com bloggers.

4. Blog Trackbacks
Blogs (and bloggers!) love links. We got ‘em. When you use one of our widgets, or our “Post to blog” service, we’ll provide a track back from our video page. We want our visitors to find your blog!

5. Share on Other Platforms
We know many of you not only blog, but use services like Facebook, Twitter, or more recently FriendFeed. You can also hook up your Vodpod collection to those services, too. So, collect a video and it goes to your blog (if you have our widget installed), and Facebook, Twitter, FriendFeed, too, if you like. We also provide media RSS feeds for your collection, and that’ll enable you to hook up your Vodpod almost anywhere else.

6. Stats
Did you know you can see how many videos views you’re getting on your widget? With our stats, you can track that and more.

7. API
Like everything you’ve just read, but doesn’t quite fit your needs? Well go build whatever you want with our API. Our friends at NewTeeVee have done just that, launching a brand new site powered by our API.

8. Search and Discovery and Community
Finally, Vodpod is a great place to hang out, and discover new videos through other people. The best way to do that is to “follow” other members who have tastes and interests similar to yours; here are some tips on that.

Filed under: Basics, For Your Blog, Publishing Tools, Tips, Tricks, Hacks

June 9, 2008 • 11:28 pm 0

NewTeeVee Station & the Vodpod API

Congratulations tonight to the crew at NewTeevee (one of the jewels of Om Malik’s digital media empire!) on the launch of their new site, NewTeeVee Station. It’s a great new site, a must-visit if you want to keep track of the best and funniest clips on the web (or you can *follow* Newteevee on Vodpod to keep track of what they’ve discovered).

And, most exciting in our opinion, it’s powered by the Vodpod API!

NewTeeVee’r Liz Gannes describes the new site as follows:

NTV Station features editorial reviews of online videos written by a team lead by Liz Shannon Miller, who comes to us from Variety and the Daily Reel. We eliminate the static and bring to you videos that are actually good — but also the stuff that’s so bad it has everyone talking. We’ve also developed a database of cast, crew, and other details to map out the expanding web video universe. We encourage our readers to become part of the editorial process by adding their own reviews, comments and ratings. You’re also welcome to get lost in our eight channels of the most memorable comedy, commercials, drama, music, news & talk, personalities, reality, and zeitgeist picks.

NewTeeVee uses Vodpod to collect and store the videos for NTV Station, and pulls titles, thumbnails, embed codes, descriptions and other data from Vodpod via our API. Data can be pulled by tag or in other, flexible ways.

In concert with the launch of NTV Station, we’re announcing some important extensions and additions to our API:

1. We’re ready to expose our “related videos” data. In many ways, this is and will increasingly be the crown jewels here at Vodpod, derived by looking at the collecting patterns of our members. And we’d love to see what folks could build with it. We haven’t posted the API calls yet up on the API site — we want to work directly with the first 5-10 folks who’d like to use this — so send us an e-mail (mark AT vodpod.com) if you’re interested.

2. We’ve also released the code for our widgets. For those who want to build their own video widgets or galleries, but don’t want to start from scratch, this should help.

We’ve made Vodpod to help people collect videos from anywhere (at least anywhere that enables sharing, by providing an embed code), to share their collections anywhere, and with anyone.

So we’ll continue to add capabilities to the API over the coming weeks and months, and are excited to see what comes next. If you’re interested in using the API, but don’t see the capabilities you need, give us a shout (feedback AT vodpod.com).

And, if you’re a blogger who doesn’t want to go to all the trouble of building a whole site, you can always use one of our fabulous widgets…

Filed under: For Your Blog, News, Publishing Tools, Stuff We Love

VodTweet

  • Cool new Wordpress plugin from @1080d for Wordpress and Vodpod users http://bit.ly/6zV4fs....just about...23 hours ago
  • Scott & Kyle at Vodpod talking mobile video strategy. http://twitvid.com/A4302....just about...1 day ago
  • Today's unusual sighting during Vodpod collection review? Video of three-headed frog http://bit.ly/7bYPwO....just about...2 days ago
  • Vodpod DB maintenance done, you should be able to add videos without a hitch. Thanks for your patience.....just about...4 days ago
  • We're doing maintenance on our databases this morning, so Vodpod is "read-only" for the next couple of hours. Thanks for the patience.....just about...4 days ago
Watch videos at Vodpod and other videos from this collection.