Vodpod Blog

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October 30, 2009 • 10:12 pm 0

Vodpod Pro Accounts in Stock

If you really love collecting videos, you’ll need one of our hot new Vodpod Pro accounts. It’s a steal at just $24.95.

What do you get? Well, for one some awesome stats:

Picture 40

Not only do the charts look cool, but you get detailed stats for each video, showing views on Vodpod as well as views through any widgets you have deployed.

What else?

  • Up to 20 video import feeds, so you can import all of the collections you have around the web
  • Up to 20 collections, so you can build your own mini-YouTube
  • And a nifty badge that tells the world how awesome you are

And it goes without saying you’ll get the kind thanks from Team Vodpod and the entire Vodpod community for helping us to keep the machines on and humming.

So run, don’t walk, to get your Vodpod account Pro-ified.

Filed under: Publishing Tools, Stuff We Love

October 15, 2009 • 6:00 am 0

Momentum Continues for VodSpot

GigaOm, PaidContent and the Cheezburger Network All Launch VodSpot-Powered Sites

We’re excited to announce this morning three leading websites have launched VodSpots, joining TechCrunch (who reported news of our VodSpot service and their VideoCrunch launch last month), Talking Points Memo, TechStars, Gawker and many others in adopting our VodSpot platform.

gigaom_video

If you’re here,  it’s very likely you read Om Malik’s GigaOm regularly; his network of sites are among the most respected in the the technology business.   Om and his team have created a new video section for GigaOm.com using VodSpot (at video.gigaom.com) that pull together videos from their various conferences.  Videos are automatically brought in using our importer from their accounts at blip.tv, Vimeo, Livestream, WordPress and YouTube. Om and his team plan to supplement these videos with others from around the web that they feel are relevant and interesting, using our bookmarklet.

paidcontent

Those who follow the media business, especially the online media business, can’t live without Rafat Ali’s fantastic site, PaidContent.org, now part of the Guardian UK media group.  Rafat and his team have assembled all of the various videos they’ve been posting to their network of blogs in one place — videos.paidcontent.org — using VodSpot.  Videos featured in their posts are automatically added to their Vodpod collection using our importer; Rafat and his team, like Om’s, plan to supplement those videos with others they find on the ‘Net.

Oh, by the way, notice the horizontal scrolling of the video sections on the main page, and vertical scrollers next to the video on video pages. All made possible by our Laminate templating engine that operates under the hood of VodSpot. You can build that kind of stuff with VodSpot if you know a little jQuery.

Cheezburger

VodSpots are for fun, too. And what’s more fun than Lolcats — in pictures and video. Ben Huh and his team at the Cheezburger Network have built the ultimate Internet comedy empire, anchored by the legendary I Can Has Cheezburger? and including the insanely popular Failblog.

They have created VodSpots for both I Can Has Cheezburger? and Failblog.

Videos are aggregated on the Cheezburger Network account at Vodpod using our importer (again!) from their various accounts at Viddler and YouTube. Because VodSpots are fully customizable, their sites maintain the same design, look, feel and navigation — even though the video site is hosted by Vodpod, and powered by our VodSpot service.

Failblog

One of the visions we’ve had for Vodpod all along is that there shouldn’t be just one video destination — there should be thousands. It probably sounds a little corny, but we’re proud to work with so many great partners and to see them use our new VodSpot service. And we hope their efforts, and ours, make the Internet a little more fun and interesting and informative.

Filed under: News, Publishing Tools

September 9, 2009 • 7:21 pm 0

VodSpot, Laminate, and a New API

We’re launching three new things today.

VODSPOT
vodspot.tvThe first is VodSpot, which we released as a bit of an experiment nine months ago.

During this period of gestation, Talking Points Memo, TechStars.tv , Gawker and many other partners built and launched VodSpot-powered sites.

We had a hunch that the combination of VodSpot (your own video site) powered by Vodpod (your Web video bookmarks) might produce some chocolate-meets-peanut butter awesomeness. But these initial efforts exceeded our expectations, and we decided to turn VodSpot into a full-fledged product and service.

VodSpot launches today with these significant new capabilities:

  • A new template engine (Laminate) that enables VodSpot publishers to build their own templates
  • A template editor that gives VodSpot publishers complete markup and creative control over their templates
  • Stock templates rebuilt from the ground up with Laminate
  • Ability to build your own VodSpot template using jQuery, Prototype, Yahoo! UI, etc.

In short, VodSpot has evolved from very good way to create your own video site to the very best way. Publishers can now easily customize VodSpot templates from head to toe (er, header to footer). They can build their own innovative templates from scratch. They can use expressions to make their templates programmable. Interested? More here.

LAMINATE
Also today: the release of Laminate as an open source project under an MIT License on GitHub. Developers can take the Laminate source code, adopt for their own publishing services or products, and point it at their own data stores.

Now, we’re not going to claim that a new open source layout engine is game-changing. We’ve followed a path blazed by others, as Scott notes: “Laminate isn’t very revolutionary – we’ve purposely tried to learn from existing template systems like the the WordPress one and Smarty templates.”

But, we have added to Laminate one new thing which should be very interesting, and quite useful, for developers; Laminate supports dynamic language for generating dynamic content on each or any page. It’s a programmable templating engine. We’re excited to see how people use it, and hope that we’ve made a valuable contribution.

API 2.0
Third, we have a brand new, built from the ground-up, API.  Publishers and developers used the first version of our API to build their own video sites  (NewTeeVee and 101GreatGoals); integrate videos into their existing service (SecondLife); and create new widgets and tools.

The new API is faster, better, and supports a much wider variety of services and calls.  Here’s a simple and easy way to understand what the new API does: you can build the same kinds of things you might with the YouTube API, but using 3,000,00 videos collected by our 600,000 members from over 10,800 sites. It’s so good, the new VodSpot service is built and runs on top of it.

We hope to see people build cool new apps using it, for services like Boxee, or Android phones that support Flash, or new, rumored tablets that come into existence.

One last thing.
Several months ago, Scott noticed a comment made by Kathy Sierra on a blog post about building community.  She wrote:

Our job as community builders is to not so much to connect with our users, but to give them more and more compelling reasons to connect with one another. And the best way to do that is through helping them learn and grow and ultimately–kick ass. The “at what?” doesn’t matter nearly as much.

We adopted Sierra’s “help users kick ass” mantra while working on VodSpot, Laminate and the new API this summer. We hope they use these new tools to do just that.

Filed under: News, Publishing Tools

July 17, 2009 • 4:56 pm 2

The New Vodpod Facebook App

We’ve finally gotten around to re-building our Facebook app. Our new Facebook app is simple, elegant, and exactly the thing you’d want if you like to share videos on Facebook with your friends.

If you use Facebook, get it now! Details on how to install the new app are below, along with an overview of what has changed.

We first built a Facebook app two years ago, when the initial Facebook application platform was launched. We attempted to build as much of the core Vodpod functionality as possible into that first app. That approach proved hard to maintain and was overly complicated; as a result the Vodpod Facebook app was the poor step-sister in our family of publishing tools.

The new Vodpod Facebook does one thing, and it does it well — it puts a nice looking entry in your Facebook feed (video thumbnail, title and your comment) whenever you add a video to your Vodpod collection:

facebook_feed_item

If this is so simple, why is it so great? Because your friends will actually see when you’ve added a video, and they’ll be more likely to watch what you’re collecting. And, because Vodpod allows you to share your favorite videos with a click from more than 10,000 different sites, they’ll be able to see all your favorites (and not just the videos you like on YouTube or DailyMotion). Over the past week, I’ve noticed that my Facebook friends are watching — and commenting on — videos I add far more frequently than they did with our old application.

It’s just three quick steps to install. Go to your Vodpod home page, and under the “share and publish” menu on the right, click Facebook and then click the “Connect with Facebook” button at the top of the page.

You’ll see three quick screens asking you to give our new app various permissions in order to publish items to your Facebook feed.

The first screen asks you to allow access for the Vodpod Facebook app — just click the big blue “Allow Access” button:

fbook_allow_access

The second screen asks for permission for “Offline Access” — which means we can publish to your Facebook page even when you’re not logged in and using Facebook. Click “allow offline access.”

fbook_allow_offline_access

The final step asks is a simple permission to allow us to publish content to your feed — click “Allow Publishing”:

fbook_allow_publishing

We’ll take you to your Vodpod account page to confirm the application is installed — you should see a screen that looks like this:

facebook_integration_vodpod

That’s it, with those quick steps the Vodpod Facebook app is installed. Next time you add a video to your Vodpod collection, you’re Facebook friends will see it in their feed.

Filed under: FAQs, News, Publishing Tools

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 23, 2009 • 6:49 pm 2

Your Vodpod (or Vodspot) on the TV

Vodpod helps people bookmark and collect their favorite videos from any site,. And we have tools that make it easy and simple to publish your video collection to any site, so people can watch those videos anywhere you like.

A logical next step for us to is to make easy for people to watch your collection not just on any site, but on any device — including your TV.

We’re starting to experiment with just that today, with the release of special RSS feeds for your Vodpod collections, and Vodspot sites, for Boxee, a very new (and very alpha!) bit of software that lets you watch videos on your PC or from the Net on your TV. People can now watch your video collection on a TV connected to Boxee by going to your collection (or your Vodspot, if you have one), copying the URL for the “Boxee RSS” feed, and pasting in at boxee.tv here.

Caveats abound: for someone to watch your videos through Boxee, they’ll have to have have Boxee installed on a device that supports it and is connected to your TV (you can also use Boxee just on your PC, but that kind of misses the point); and not all Flash players play nicely with Boxee, so your viewing experience will be a bit inconsistent.

But it’s interesting, and it certainly provides a peak into the future. We should note Boxee isn’t the only game in town. There is another similar, and very interesting bit of software called Plex, and we read with interest today that Flash10 is coming to a variety of phones this Fall. Interesting times.

Filed under: News, Publishing Tools

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

VodTweet

  • Today's unusual sighting during Vodpod collection review? Video of three-headed frog http://bit.ly/7bYPwO....just about...21 hours ago
  • Vodpod DB maintenance done, you should be able to add videos without a hitch. Thanks for your patience.....just about...3 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...3 days ago
  • A little Vodpod maintenance tomorrow AM to fix our Mysql bug. 8am-11am PT. http://bit.ly/8vBgA6....just about...3 days ago
  • Apologies for our 20 min outage today. Our database software (Mysql) has a bug that brought down our database.....just about...3 days ago
Watch videos at Vodpod and other videos from this collection.