Viddler

Speaking of Podcamp Pittsburgh, did you happen to know that Podcamp Pittsburgh 2 is the birthplace of BACN? Watch this very cool video to see footage from PCPGH2 and an explanation from PCPGH guru Justin.

It’s so awesome that a conversation around the registration table at last year’s Podcamp Pittsburgh resulted in a concept that is now vital to the way that I (try to) manage my email every day. What do you think they’ll come up with this year?

If you would like to suggest a video to be featured on our blog, feel free to send me a message, use our forums, or just comment on this post.

I (Brandice) will be packing my bags tomorrow evening so that I can leave early from my day job and head eastward to Pittsburgh for Podcamp Pittsburgh 3. I’ll be there for both days, and I may have some Viddler tees to give away, so hit me up if you see me there.

It’s looking to be a really great event that I’m excited to check out for the first time, and with promo/informational videos like those in the player below, I’m sure there are more than enough awesome media folk to hang out with.

If you’re going to be there, be sure to leave a comment to this entry and let me know how I can recognize you if we run into each other, because I’m hoping to meet some Viddler folk and get a lot of great video footage of both the sessions and the networking antics. Stay tuned!

If you would like to suggest a video to be featured on our blog, feel free to send me a message, use our forums, or just comment on this post.

As someone who tries to run a few miles a few times a week, I still can not imagine what it would be like to run a full marathon (26 miles). To top it off, Steve Mackel from SoCalRunning.com (subscribe: socalrunning), takes along his video camera for the entire marathon to give updates!

Congratulations to Steve for setting his own personal record! This is definitely inspiration for me to perhaps push a little harder on my next run and perhaps set some new goals in exercise for myself.

What about you? Do any running lately?

This week’s Viddler interview is with Don Burnside (friend: dbwilldo).  Don is your average Viddler who has his own blog, shares his thoughts online with a few blogs that he runs, and sometimes shares a video here and there.

Thanks to lavaredera for suggesting this interview.

So, who is Don Burnside, and what does he do?

I’m your basic all around tech guy, web guy, MINI Cooper owner, blogger, podcaster, single dad, photo taker and wannabe chef. Oh, and I also do windows.

You’ve got sites all over the place, can you take a moment to introduce these to us with a short description of each?

I do have sites everywhere, but I’m trying to fix that. I blog about almost anything at windthefrog.net, blog about my motoring adventures in My 2003 MINI Cooper (with 197k miles) at dbmini.us, podcast about MINI Coopers at whiteroofradio.com, and podcast about cars in the entertainment industry a thehollywoodcarshow.com. Finally there is donburnside.com to bring it all together, or at least it will in the very near future.

I’ve been subscribed to wind(the)frog for months (love the meaning behind the name, by the way). I read that your family recently found the site. How did that happen and what has resulted from that?

Yes, my family has found my personal blog and it happened via Viddler. I’ve been working on transferring some old 8mm film to video for my family and posted a short sample for them to see. They started clicking and found my blog. Since I don’t really blog about family (much) it hasn’t been a problem. Bonus is that they enjoy my writing so I’m getting some extra positive feedback. I will say that I did have to delete one post, but it wasn’t very good and it was from about 3 years ago. You know, just in case. Archives can be dangerous!

How do you use video on any of your sites, and how does that compare other media that you share online?

On my blog, I try to use video in place of a regular blog post. Or as a way to recap or update posts I have made over the last month. It hasn’t been hugely successful, but I enjoy doing and a few of my readers enjoy it as well. I’ve also been trying to introduce a little video into the podcasts, especially when I’m at an event. That has been very well received and I hope to do more. Speaking of which, where is that Viddler iTunes support?

I love your Sunday “brain dumps”. What inspired those and what benefit have they had for you?

I started doing The Sunday Posts over a year ago as a way to have some kind of feature on my blog and also a way to force me to put up at least 1 quality post a week. The topic is random, usually something I heard about the day before or something I have recently done. But I spend a little more time on them editing and spell checking and the posts have been pretty popular. I try to do it weekly, but there are some weeks where it doesn’t happen. If I don’t have one in me, or if it doesn’t turn out the way I like, then I dump it and try again next week.

Thanks to Don for taking the time to answer our questions.  Be sure to click on the links in the interview to check out Don’s videos, photos, thoughts, and Mini Cooper adventures.

Don’t miss our past interviews with Team postgreen, Jennifer DiDonato, and Kenn Bell.

Suggest an interview! If you would like to be interviewed, or know of a Viddler community member that you’d like to see interviewed, please share those in the comments.

First off, dynamitekid has a killer logo uploaded to his player. Uber jealous.

Second of all, what is he DOING with his MacBook Pro? I have no idea why he needs to hang his MBP by a dvi cable, but I’m glad that it didn’t result in utter electronic disaster for him, and I have to say it looks pretty cool there at the end.

Thanks to dynamitekid for sharing some “behind the scenes” action, and if you’d like to see some of his finished work, he’s some pretty cool stuff.

The Community Spotlight is for featuring special content by members of our community. Do you have a special video you’d like to share with the rest of the community?

If you would like to suggest a video to be featured in our Community Spotlight, feel free to send me a message or just comment on this post.

Here is a truly genius idea. American Winery.com (subscribe: AmericanWinery), a blog “with the goal of providing meaningful, educational and cutting edge content to wine enthusiasts and wine makers alike”, is sending Flip video cameras to wineries, let them record their story, and then when they get the Flip video camera back they edit the video and post it on Viddler!

Here is the full description from a recent blog post:

“The premise is simple. We mail a Flip video camera to our winery partners and encourage them to record any aspect of the winery life – daily operations, tastings, harvest footage – anything that would give our consumers a firsthand view into the the lives of the people and the processes behind their wine. Once the winery sends the Flip back, we edit the footage into a short clip and post it – introducing a world of wine-lovers to the story behind the wine.”

The results of this effort are fantastic.  You can see a few videos that have been posted to the American Winery group here on Viddler. Here is an example video from The Lone Canary winery in Spokane, Washington.

You can view all of the episodes from their “Straight From the Source” series right on the American Winery.com web site. As a wine-lover myself, I’m looking forward to more videos from wineries around the world.

SteveSaylor is fairly new to Viddler, but definitely isn’t new to the online media world. Seems he’s worked with the likes of Leo Laporte, Amber MacArthur, and Alex Albrecht, and he’s a comic book geek, so he’s automatically okay by me.

It also seems that he’s been having trouble with his cable service… not the actually cable, but rather with strange customer service calls that seem to imply he’s married to someone he doesn’t know. (Watch below.)

Thanks to Steve for sharing his bizarre customer service issue, and if you’d like to welcome Steve to Viddler, hop over to his profile and friend him up!

The Community Spotlight is for featuring special content by members of our community. Do you have a special video you’d like to share with the rest of the community?

If you would like to suggest a video to be featured in our Community Spotlight, feel free to send me a message or just comment on this post.

Proof once again that you’re never too young to start doing 15 second videos. Lila, the daughter of Geoff Dimasi (friend: geoffd), not only dances for the camera (expertly I might add) but she also knows when her time is up with an emphatic “done”!

I think we need more children dancing on 15 second videos! Thanks to Lila and Geoff for sharing your “dancing in my pants” video!

Sorry to anyone that is having trouble accessing Viddler.com or some of our videos.  Although some of you might not be seeing anything wrong, others are, and so we wanted to make sure that you knew that we knew about it.

Update: 3:41pm EST:

Everything should be back to normal for all of our visitors, and those watching Viddler videos around the world.  Sorry for the down time.  Here is the short version of the official message we’re sending to our clients and partners.

“Due to a temporarily power failure our flash video storage server crashed at approximately 2:06pm EST today October 10th.  Our team was able to recover the system fairly quickly and all services were restored within one hour and two minutes.  You may have experienced an interupt in service during this time and for that we’re sorry.

We’re monitoring the situation while at the same time working on a newer, more robust solution to ensure this doesn’t happen again.

If you have any questions, you can call or email us anytime.”

And to all of you, our community, our video producers, our fantastic viewers everywhere – sorry. We try our best to think of every possible problem that may come up and we’re going to continue to do that.  Today, we learned one more way we can do better.

If you have any questions, you can ask them here in the comments.

Rebecca Bollwitt (subscribe: miss604) clearly takes advantage of Viddler’s customizable player with her blog, Miss 604.  Miss 604 “has served up an vast and compelling assortment of Vancouver activities, activist missives, girlie reflections and techie narratives.”

One of my favorite categories on Miss 604 is day tripping.  Day tripping is where you take a day and go on a short trip.  See this trip Rebecca and her man John went to Grouse Mountain.

Special thanks to Rebecca for including our player on her blog. It definitely compliments the branding that she has going on there.  Consider subscribing to her videos and her site!

What is your favorite Viddler player? We’re going to feature a new Viddler video player here on our blog once a week. Why not suggest one?