November 16th, 2008
by
admin
YouTube has been elevated to such heights by its own success, that you may not have come across these 4 other video services. There from 4 of the biggest (sometimes legacy) names on the internet, Yahoo!, MySpace, AOL, and even Google (in case you forgot Google tried to knock off YouTube before throwing in the towel and buying YouTube itself.
The thing is almost all of these services (like YouTube btw) screw with the compression of your video. Ergo, you can create a perfectly good looking video on your computer, upload it to their site and they will recompress it in a different format. What this means is that your video will often be distorted when you use any of these services.
Its kind of like if you take silly puddy and roll it out like cookie dough on a newspaper photograph of the Main Street USA. The image of the photograph will be captured on the silly puddy. Then you take the silly puddy and hand it to a three year old, who proceeds to stretch the picture into some new frame size and before you know it you are looking at a pixelated las vegas strip in puddy.
That’s kind of like what these services do as they attempt to fit videos that you load up of dimension A with shape B, into Shape C with dimension D.
Here are a few examples of the unfortunate results that I found with these services:
Yahoo!
MySpace
Google Video
In the Google example, if you embed the video its going to be significantly different than if you view it on the actual site.
AOL
Final note, this video was uploaded via TubeMogul, then sent out to each of the video services above. You may note a mis-spelling in the title, that happened at a TubeMogul level, and then was launched across the video channels above.
So here’s a tip, quadruple check your spellings! 
November 15th, 2008
by
admin
This is going to be an atypical holiday season for many many people. Budgets and wallets and credit lines are tight everywhere, and Santa is still paying his gas bill from last year. Things just won’t be the same as people start to get into the holiday shopping spirit whether you compare prices like crazy when you are online shopping.
ShopandConfess and eBillme started a year long contest last February that seems to be in a sweet spot going into the holidays today.
Considering that many people are seeing their credit card credit lines dropped, halved and squeezed the eBillme model now makes a lot more sense, but regardless the chance to win $1,500 (in November or December) or the Grand Prize of $15,000 is looking a lot sweeter too!
If you place an entry into the contest, please consider referring our site (top10tech.com) :) We’d like to see you win, and know that we helped make Christmas a little easier on your finances.
For those of you looking into ways to use video to get your message across the web or kick of a great campaign, this is a terrific example of how to do it right, and also how to plant that seed early (feb 2008) and be at the right place at the right time never hurts either!
Here’s that contest link one more time.
October 19th, 2008
by
Brett Bumeter
Pamela Recording for Skype is a great little tool for recording your skype calls. The basic version is free and will record 15 minutes of a Skype conversation.
The standard version will record 30 minutes of conversation at a time at a cost of $14.95 US. The professional and the business versions will record an unlimited amount of a call in to run the option of recording Skype video and Skype chats along with building in the podcasting system and blogging systems.
All versions of the product are available in a free trial for 30 days!
This tool comes highly recommended by both Podcasters and professional voice artists. It is relatively inexpensive and offers a number of other bonus options that will be useful for many people especially the answering machine options. At prices ranging from $0-$45. At about 1/6th of the price of lower end Movado watches, it’s not terribly expensive. If you’re looking to do a podcast, or capture a brainstorm during a Skype call, then this tool could be invaluable.
I’ve tried many other applications, that were offered as free downloads, or charged just a few dollars, and most of them have been ripoffs. If you find one that works better than this for a better price, let me know. Until then, this is the one that I recommend.
