Viddler

One of our favorite veteran Viddlers, Edwinv, created a great new group called 5Things, and I’ve decided to make July the official 5Things Month here at Viddler.

At some point this month, I want each and every one of YOU to tell us 5 things about yourself, join the 5Things group, and share your 5 things with all of us! The most popular 5Things video at the end of the month will be rewarded with some Viddler goodies in the mail from yours truly, and there will also be a “judge’s pick” that will result in Viddler goodies, so get crackin’!

What you need to do:

1. Join the 5Things group.
2. Make a video telling us 5 things about you that we probably don’t know.
3. Add the video to the 5Things group.
4. Tell people to favorite the video if they like it! (Most favorites wins!)

Feel free to make more than one video if you think of 10 or 15 things Viddler doesn’t know about you, and help us make sure that new members know about this new and very cool way to introduce themselves to our community. Thanks to Edwin for a great idea!

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.

As you know, there’s a VidChallenge going on involving pets (check it out HERE), and the deadline is almost here. Have you gone and favorited (via checking that star next to the video title) your favorite entry?

Here are the current contenders:

Gruven_Reuven - Kitties
Shedtroll - 2 Cats and Fish
Patricius - Porkchop the Pup
Bonassin - Primate… I think
Smith - Poodles
BeachWalks - Roxy at Beach
Scruffymedia - Farting Duck
Joshftv - Dogs
Edwinv - Kumo the Dog
Talia - Pepper the Puppy
Pburghstever - Felis Catus Domestica
Newsvj - Fat Dogs
Newsvj - Hurricanes and Pets

Go in and star the one(s) you like, because we’re currently have what is looking like a thirteen-way tie. Pick more than one if you like (I’m the only one allowed to star all of them - I can’t be swaying the vote!), but vote quickly if you want your vote to count.

Now, go watch some cute animals!

My last act before disappearing until June 14th (nuptials and honeymoon) is to issue a new VidChallenge. I want to see RESULTS, people! If I come back to no pet videos (and I know a lot of you have pets), I’ll be very sad. Flood the VidChallenge group with your various animal friends, and a winner will be chosen in a couple of weeks (and perhaps they will get a spiffy Viddler tee or some stickers?). I’m looking forward to meeting all of your furry (or otherwise) animal companions!

RULES:

1. Tag it with “PetChallenge”

2. Put it in the VidChallenge group

3. Must be pet-related

4. Three entries per user allowed

5. Entries due by June 20th

Do you have a MeToday full of exciting news? Are you a member of a group that deserves a shout out on the site? Have you noticed a new member who could really use a warm Viddler welcome from our community? Community Spotlight is for these types of community features, and we welcome constant input from YOU, 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.

Your activity on the Web, whether you’re publishing videos, photos, and blog posts, or just reading them - is like carving out your very own “corner of the Web”.

If you could create a list of all of your web sites, social networks, and even your friend’s web sites - you could create a really neat search engine of stuff you recommend. With Lijit, you can do just that.

Lets go one step further with this example. Lets say you write about your vacations on your blog, you upload video to Viddler, and you publish your photos to Flickr. Wouldn’t it be really neat if, from your own Web site, people could search all of that information? With Lijit, you can do just that.

You might be saying: “Wait a minute, I’ve seen sites like this, and they all take so long to setup.” You might want to give Lijit a try because within about 3 minutes of loading their front page I had my own search on my site, and so did Rob Sandie. Their sign up process is rather genius. Their widget creation tool, simple and easy. We think they have it all going on.

Give Lijit a try and let people search your Viddler videos right from your site!

Thanks to the Lijit team for adding support for Viddler in one of their latest releases.

Congrats to Matthew (friend: crashingtothese) for his win of the recent InstrumentToday Vidchallenge! Matthew won by a close margin against some other heavy contenders, listed below the winning entry.

Great job, everyone! Stay tuned for my SUPER challenge with living props, coming Monday!

Other fantastic entries to the contest:

• Kaysha’s Killer Mac-Created Beats(I HAVE to find out how to do this on my MacBook!)
• Pnebleu Used to Play Timpani (Percussionists rock!)
• KatrinaSummer Like the Sound of Money (Me too!)
• LeggyBlonde Lays Down Old School Gauntlet (I LOVE stick-on earrings!)
• Crashingtothese’s 2nd Entry Answers the Old School Challenge (Never seen anyone play the comb!)
• Oh, and I Play Trombone (2) (3) (Oy vey.)

Thanks to Marshall Kirkpatrick from ReadWriteWeb for naming us one of the nine interesting company blogs today. Thanks a lot!

We’ve always worked very hard to keep our blog up-to-date with daily featured videos, announcements about new features here on the site, and events that are happening around the world involving our Viddler community. Recently, Brandice (friend: brandice) our Community Leader, has been keeping up with a new feature on the blog called the Community Spotlight. The Community Spotlight showcases some of the things you Viddlers care most about - and we all think it is a great addition to our site.

Thanks to Brandice for all her hard work here on the blog and to all of you in the Viddler community for constantly giving us interesting things to think about, write about, and feature. Keep them coming!

Why not check out some of the other interesting blogs on Marshall’s list?

The Viddler community should be noticing some new features with our 2.4.07 launch, and we want you to be aware of what’s changed. The biggest and most exciting change you’ll notice is the addition of subscriptions, something that many of you have been asking for.

Rob has a lot of great things to say about this new feature in his brief video about the 2.4.07 launch, and if you want to hear a little bit about what’s coming down the road (hint: there is mention of some other features that we know many of you have been asking for) for the 2.4.08 launch, check it out:

Basically, with the new launch, you will now be able to subscribe to a show via the convenient button next to the username in many areas of the site, you’ll be able to view your subscriptions in the Explore (Videos -> Subscriptions) section, you can delete subscriptions in the Explore section (under People -> Subscriptions), and you can set up different notifications for the users that you subscribe to under your Settings.

Viewing subscriptions:

Adding subscriptions (before and after view):

Subscription notification options under Settings:

In addition to the subscription option, we’re also happy to be adding some other features:

• There is now a section for your friends’ videos under Explore, not just in the Dashboard.
• “Embed This” has been added to the Simple Player.
• There is a new RSS feed dropdown with easy subscribing via Google Reader or Bloglines.
• When you log in now, you will remain on the same page, rather than being redirected to the Dashboard.
• On each video page, you will now see Promoted Videos, which are videos from our Red Carpet users.

There have also been several bug fixes:

• RSS links when logged out of Viddler are now fixed.
• Issues with Digg tag character encoding have been fixed.
• Issues fixed with the numbers in search.
• WordPress “Blog This” issues have been fixed.

Now that you know what’s new and what’s been fixed, take a look around and let us know what you think. As Rob mentions in his video, your feedback is incredibly important to us, because we want to continue to offer new features that you want the most. If you’d like, you could even create a feedback video telling us what you think of the update and add it to the UserTalk group.

Now, if you haven’t already, go subscribe to some people!

Do YOU play a musical instrument? Are you at least really funny when you try to play one? Check out the current VidChallenge:

As mentioned, the winner will be chosen solely based on the most favorites, with any tie-breakers being broken by a runner-up (in other words, YOU pick the winner, so don’t forget to favorite the entries you really like!).

I had planned to do a video announcement of the contest, but my camera is acting up. Rest assured, I WILL be providing my own entry with a stupendously embarrassing trombone performance (not eligible for winning, but just to prove that I’m willing to do the challenge along with you)… you will NOT be disappointed!

Tell us how you learn to play the instrument… tell us why you picked it… and most importantly, tell viewers why they should pick YOUR instrumental MeToday as a winner to be featured on the 23rd! GO!

Congrats to the man with the craziest morning hair and the VidChallenge entry with the most favorites, Derek (djsteen)! That is some very serious bed head, sir!

Keep an eye on the Community Spotlight on Monday, because we’ll be starting another challenges, and suggestions are more than welcome until then.

We had some other really great entries that you can check out as well:

• robshoy (need-a-haircut morning hair)
• iJustine (Bon Jovi-esque bed head?)
• VegasMac (couple’s morning hair)
• LauraDameeks (morning hair with retainer bonus)
• JLynnJohnston (morning mohawk)
• leggyblonde (sleep deprived morning hair)
• JustJason (barely there morning hair)
• Brandice (my contribution)
• DigitalFather (challenge creator)

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

Each and every day more of your favorite videos, from vlogs to viral, are showing up here on Viddler. Today is no exception. Now more than ever, thanks to Revision3 and all of its shows joining Viddler, you can watch your favorite Web video shows in your favorite Web video player!

Please join me in welcoming DiggNation, The Digg Reel, Infected, The Revision3 Gazette, Tekzilla, my friend Om Malik’s GigaOm Show, PixelPerfect, iFanboy, SYSTM, Scam School, XLR8R, Web Drifter, and the Totally Rad Show to the Viddler community.

What’s the matter? Too many really great shows to follow? Don’t worry, we’ve got you covered. Add your favorite Revision3 shows as friends (by clicking on the above links and then clicking ‘Add as Friend’) and you will be notified when new shows are released. You can be notified through your Dashboard and/or through email!

Want a taste? Here is Revision3’s flagship show, DiggNation “Live from San Francisco”. Not to be missed are DiggNation episodes that were recorded live from Amsterdam, London, the iPhone line, an Indy Car race track, and from CES. I think it is safe to say that Revision3, and its shows, bring a whole bunch of really great Internet programming to Viddler, and we’re really happy about it.

Getting excited yet? Here is what Revision3’s CEO, Jim Louderback, had to say about the Viddler and its community:

“Here at Revision3, we’re always looking for exciting and innovative ways for viewers to watch and interact with our programming. We love the advanced features of Viddler’s streaming video player – they’ve done an amazing job building in interactivity and navigation. We’re thrilled to be a part of the action.”

But wait! There’s more! Are you in the New York City area? Did you know there was a DiggNation meetup in NYC tonight? (Sorry for the short notice). There are more details on Revision3’s blog and on the official Meetup page where you can RSVP, but here’s the address if you can make it. The meetup begins at 5pm.

Lunasa Bar
126 1st avenue
New York, NY 10009
212-228-8580

Phew! This is great news for both Viddler and its community and Revision3 and their growing audience. Thanks to the Revision3 crew for joining the Viddler community and we look forward to much, much more in the future. What is your favorite Revision3 show? Have you friended them on Viddler yet?

You can Digg this story!