Does your web work include video production? A major challenge for videographers is working closely with a client who knows what they want but doesn’t understand how to achieve it as they don’t know anything about the video production process. Clients also often don’t know when or how to give feedback in a way that keeps the project on track and heading in the right direction.
A tool that might help both videographers and their clients work through the video production process is Market7. This online suite of tools lets you upload a video to a private area of the site. Your client can then review the clip and comment on it. Their comments are embedded into the video timeline to match up so you can see the exact sections of the video they are discussing in order to help pinpoint and streamline the feedback process. Read the rest of this entry »
Alex Hillman is the co-founder of Independents Hall (colloquially known as IndyHall) a “coworking space and community” in Philadelphia. IndyHall is home to designers, developers, writers, artists, entrepreneurs, scientists, educators, small business owners, telecommuters, marketers, videographers and game developers, amongst other industries.
I spoke with Alex about his motivations for bootstrapping IndyHall, the experience of running the community, his hopes for the future and advice for others. Incredibly, Alex recorded an extraordinary and engaging 30 minutes of video for us, telling the fascinating story of IndyHall’s history and future.
We edited together some highlights on the background of IndyHall, along with plans for the future of Philadelphia’s coworking community as a single video here for readers who want a brief introduction to the IndyHall story.
You can find the full set of questions, answered as short video clips, over on YouTube:
Incidentally, the relaunch of the IndyHall web site site just a few days ago is noteworthy in its approach to cohering and aggregating the community of coworkers in the city, providing a platform and a voice for their agenda.
If you’re interested in the experiences of coworking community founders, you should also check out our earlier interview with Stephanie Booth, founder of Lausanne’s Eclau coworking community.
Like Stephanie, Alex’s insights and experiences are invaluable. Do share your own experiences of coworking or founding a coworking community in the comments below.
If you need to create a screencast, perhaps to demonstrate an app, there are many tools out there that can help you get the job done. We’ve covered Jing and CamStudio previously here on WebWorkerDaily. If you want a really simple free solution that you can use from any browser, though, you might like to check out ScreenToaster — especially in the light of some great new features that have been announced today.
ScreenToaster is an eay-to-use application that runs as a Java applet; it works in pretty much any browser on any operating system. It can record audio from a microphone and video from a webcam, as well simultaneously recording the action on the screen. The results are high quality and you can add subtitles after you’ve finished recording. Here’s a quick screencast of ScreenToaster in action (made using ScreenToaster, naturally!) Read the rest of this entry »
Last year, in a post called “6 Free Apps and Utilities for Working with Video,” I discussed how many more web workers are dealing with video on a daily basis. Video content is good for everything from promotional materials to embedding on sites and blogs. Screencasts, for which you can use easy tools to record the goings-on on your screen, then share the results with others as streaming video files, are also on the rise. One of my favorite, quick-in, quick-out Windows applications for this purpose is CamStudio.
Here’s a look at how easy it is to get started using it.
As an aspiring videoblogger and indy filmmaker, I’ve been eying mDialog for a while but had yet to wrap my head around what it actually offered.
I also had a strange first introduction to mDialog that may have clouded my view of the site. Luckily, I had a chance to speak with Greg Philpott, founder of mDialog, to learn more about the site and services, straight from the horse’s mouth, so to speak.
mDialog is for any video publisher who wants to upload and manage high resolution video. The site utilizes a desktop app and a plug-in that works with the Safari browser and is compatible with Apple TV and the iPhone. Both Mac and PC users can use mDialog’s apps.
The addition of Gmail Voice and Video Chat to Google’s list of services brought back to mind a question I’ve been thinking about for a while: have we gone past the saturation point in having different ways to chat with people? Even if you count only real-time ways to talk to people, there are a pile of instant messaging applications, more audio chat options and conference call providers than you can shake a stick at, and video options including Skype, Oovoo, and Gmail – to name a few.
And that’s not to mention just walking down the hall to talk to someone in person, which is not an option for a lot of web workers.
Yuuguu is a favorite amongst Web Worker Daily’s writers, with new features being added continuously to the popular screen-sharing service, largely driven by the real needs of its users.
Around a month ago the company added Linux and Flash clients, but I suggested that this perhaps needed to be enhanced with Yugma-style plugins for existing social networks.
Fortunately, Yuuguu’s been thinking ahead and at this week’s The Future of Web Apps in London, announced that Gmail and Google Talk users will be able to invoke Yuuguu screensharing sessions with existing contacts, rather than those within the Yuuguu client. Coupled with the earlier launch of a Flash-based viewer, this helps to broaden the usefulness of the service as its reach extends beyond previous technical barriers. Read the rest of this entry »
I was poking around the comments on my Preparing to Live Blog an Event post and came across a conversation about live blogging events at ProBlogger that made me think more about how I’m going to handle single-handedly “live blogging” a 3-day conference. The discussion also made me think more about what exactly “live blogging” means.
The social media maven for nonprofits Beth Kanter defined Live Blogging as: “basically taking notes, photos, or recordings at lectures, conferences, and presentations of what was said and posting it to your blog.” (quote found here) I agree with Kanter’s basic definition, but for anyone who hasn’t tried live blogging before, I think this definition isn’t detailed enough.
If I had to define live blogging, I’d define it this way:
“Live (multimedia) blogging is capturing the words, sounds, and images at an event and posting them online to a variety of Web 2.0 enabled sites with the goal of sharing the experience for those who cannot attend while preserving key moments in an archive.”
Here are some more of my thoughts about live blogging.
Does your web work include video production? A major challenge for videographers is working closely with a client who knows what they want but doesn’t understand how to achieve it as they don’t know anything about the video production process. Clients also often don’t know when or how to give feedback in a way that keeps the project on track and heading in the right direction.
If you need to create a screencast, perhaps to demonstrate an app, there are many tools out there that can help you get the job done. We’ve covered 
