Use Video to Help Your Start-Up Business

May 18, 2011 by

This is a guest post, provided by Robert Durango.

When most start-up companies begin to build their web presence, they focus on their blogs, websites, and social networking pages such as those found on Facebook and Twitter. Although all of these are effective at increasing a company’s online visibility, there is one important online resource that many business owners overlook: online video.

Video Set for Episode 02 (Camera)The rise of YouTube has made video creation ever more important for start-up businesses wishing to gain web presence. Through YouTube, companies can provide online tutorials, commercials, and other promotional video to a large scale public. In addition to offering video to a broader public, YouTube videos have the potential of going viral which for business owners means that they have the potential of reaching millions of potential clients for free.

Embedding videos on your own company’s website that may be linked to other social networking sites are also a great way to reach potential clients and raise your web presence. With the rise of technology, the common public is more interested in being entertained and engaged online and videos provide that needed stimuli.

However, for the common business owner, managing and publishing videos online may not be easy. But before you hire a team of web designers and programmers, consider purchasing online video publisher software. An online video publisher helps business owners publish and share their video across multiple platforms through one easy-to-use administrative page, and also provides streaming video hosting.

By using these types of software, business owners are able to constantly provide social networking sites, clients, and partners with up-to-date videos. Money doesn’t have to be made strictly though product sales for today’s business either. By using video, start-up businesses can increase their profits by further monetizing their site. Online video publisher software are also able to help business owners determine how far their brand is expanding, inform their target audience, and increase their user engagement all of which are needed to create a strong foundation for success.

This is a guest post, provided by Robert Durango.

Image Credit: Racum, on Flickr

Filed Under: General News Tagged With: , , , , ,

Fixing Flash Video Split Screen in Firefox

April 18, 2011 by

Recently, after an upgrade to Adobe Flash (10.2, I believe), all of the videos that I would want to watch in Firefox would exhibit the following problem:

As you can see, the screen was split vertically with a nice green bar across the middle.  In both, the picture is distorted.  Even at full screen, it was very much unbearable.

In resolving the issue, I tried the old standby of reinstalling the software.  Full uninstall, full reinstall.  No change.  Several searches proved fruitless as well.  But, I think I may have been searching with the wrong search terms.  My first searches, I was searching for “flash broken firefox”, “video broken firefox”, and the like.

Finally, today, I did  a search for “flash split video firefox” and happened upon a result in the [H]ardOCP forums that mentioned something that sounded similar to what I was experiencing.  The fix?  A simple setting in Flash.

  • To fix the problem, right click on the video while it is playing.
  • Click on settings
  • Uncheck the “Hardware Acceleration” check box (like you see in the picture at right)
  • Reload the page.

That’s it.  Video works perfectly for me now.

Filed Under: General News Tagged With: , ,

I don’t watch Video.

March 13, 2008 by

My interview with Mark yesterday along with his additional response (“Why I Video Blog“) earlier in the week made me think a little bit more about what I really think of video blogging.

And the truth is, I don’t think much of it at all.  I very rarely watch the videos and when I do, I find myself drifting off within minutes.  I’m not saying that the video content is boring or even that it’s not engaging.  It may be both engaging and exciting.  It doesn’t matter.  I can’t do it.

Part of the reason that I can’t do it is that I’m a quick reader.  My wife is always giving me a hard time about how much faster I read than she does.  And of course, I give her a hard time about being slow. ;)  I can read a post that’s 500 words long in a very short time.  How long will it take me to watch a video that has the same content?  5 minutes?  Longer?  It slows me down.

Quite possibly the biggest reason that I don’t like video blog posts is that I find them to be excessive.  What do I mean?  I like things concise.  Why take 5 minutes to tell me something that could very easily have been summarized in 200 words?  I’ll take the summaries thanks.  (Mark is very good about adding summaries to his posts.  Thanks Mark!)

Want another reason?  American broadband sucks.  I’ve got a 128kbps connection.  I could have a 5mb connection if I wanted to pay twice as much.  The kicker here is that the folks in Europe and East Asia pay less and get much, much more.  Do you have any idea how long it takes to watch/load a 5 minute video post over a 128kbps connection?  Way too long.  If the only way that I can get your content is to watch a video, you’ve already lost me.  I shouldn’t have to fork over twice as much a month just to get your content.  I’ll find someone else that can give it to me in text.

Mark makes a good point.  Based on some rudimentary stats, a number of people that is roughly equivalent to half of his readers watch his daily video.  That’s pretty good.  And for those people, I’m sure that they enjoy getting his content through video.  They are people like him that like video.  And maybe some day I’ll get that faster connection and find the time to listen/watch a few of his videos.  Until then, I’ll be reading the summary below it.

Filed Under: General News Tagged With: , , , ,