Why Tube with Youtube?
According to the general public, there’s only one place for viewing videos - Youtube. I suppose that this notion can be easily generated due to the fact Youtube’s got the most users and videos and is the pioneer of internet video - but let’s face it, thanks to its popularity, Youtube has gone down the tube. Youtube’s video quality alone turned me off the first time I watched one of my videos. So why do I continue to tube with Youtube?
Audience reach
It’s all about the audience. I mainly create videos to promote my blogs and to use as a means of digital media (as a digital media blog, I’ve got to stay on top of this stuff). Youtube would be ideal for the first cause thanks to its huge user base. However, if I wanted to publish a video post, I would rather do it on another network with higher quality when compared to Youtube - I choose to use Blip.tv thanks to its acceptance of users under 17 with parental consent. I do turn 17 this fall though.
Also, most of my friends have Youtube accounts, making them available to comment. I was surprised when I published a communication technology project last year on Youtube and had a huge number of responses - I didn’t even push people to comment, and yet here they were coming left and right. I won’t lie - my project was a three-week piece of work for a five-minute music video, and I hardly have that kind of time to continue producing good quality work. However, I do hope to receive some comments on my videos.
Playing Catch-up?
Well, it seems as though Youtube is finally playing catch-up with the rest of the video hosts out there. Along with beginning to offer higher-quality resolutions for certain videos only, Youtube is also starting to offer revenue programs, making it ever-so-appealing.
As soon as Youtube makes these features more widely available, I’m sure Youtube will be unstoppable. However, I still suggest using other video hosts, as I predict that they will certainly always be a few steps ahead of Youtube.
Priorities
I guess it all depends on your priority and your objective. If you’re going for reach and audience and promotion, you’re going to want to stick with Youtube. However, if you’re trying to make a video post or submit a short film, or even host a longer film, you’re going to want to choose something over the measly ten minutes that you get from Youtube.
What Should Your Avatar Display?
We’ve all been here before - the crossroads to what our new display picture or avatar should feature. Should it be our role model? A scantily-clad celebrity? Just a word with some patterns?
I don’t know about all of you out there, but I want my avatar to represent me. And what better way to represent me than with my own picture? Pictures are a great way to connect with other users - firstly your posting a picture of yourself would make me believe you were more trustworthy and easier to connect with than someone who simply had a picture of a dog or a celebrity on their display.
If you don’t have any pictures of yourself worthy enough to post up or want to keep your privacy, that’s still cool - why not put your username or your real name on your avatar? I know many people that use this technique - even though it doesn’t convey much of you, it still represents your online self.
If you’re feeling creative or insecure about those huge moles on your face (heehee), why not use a Photoshop filter? If you don’t have Photoshop, consider using a free alternative such as Paint.NET or Gimpshop. If you’ve got a webcam and want to create your own virtual photobooth to add lots of effects, I suggest trying out SnapStrip, an alternative to Mac’s popular photobooth program.
As for posing, that’s a whole different story - I will be writing a post on that later, but feel free to be creative. The best avatars are silly (for me, anyway - not so much for the CEO of Serious Business Inc). And who says peace signs are out of style?
Stay away from putting up foul fingers, cursing, or any of that jazz - it’s got no place on your avatar, even if it’s your favourite word. It already tarnishes your reputation (or solidifies it as someone who might be looking for a fight) and definitely isn’t what you want to be promoting, especially in many of the respected online communities out there.
One thing for me to whine about - when you’re shooting that photo of yourself in the mirror, please crop the camera out. I’ve got no idea why people leave the camera in there - it almost seems on purpose - but it makes them look pretty silly sometimes, and at times it even covers up their face! What’s the point of having an avatar of yourself that blocks out your face? It only opens you up to ugly jokes.
But the most important piece of advice I’ve yet to give you is to suit yourself! I highly discourage profanity, but if you feel you’ve got nothing else to put up, then go ahead (at your own risk - not mine). It’s really you that should feel best from your avatar, and not whose looking at it.
If you want an example of the greatest avatar in the world, take a look at my About page - I’m sure you’ll get a couple of hoots out of it (if not, then you’re mature - good for you!).
And if you’ve got any questions, please hold them for now - I’m planning a few more posts on avatars because it’s actually quite the huge topic to cover.
The View is On
So, you just bought your new media center PC and you’ve got Vista pre-installed. Great, now you’re stuck with the two Vista programs - Windows Media Player 11 or Windows Media Center. Not that there’s anything wrong with them, except they can get extremely boring and extremely dull. Why can’t there be an iTunes for Windows - that actually works (don’t get me started on how incompatible iTunes is with Windows, just take a look at those black squares when iTunes loads on your PC and tell me you don’t see anything). Well, friend, today is your lucky day.
ViewOn actually is a customizable iTunes with a Windows twist - it works on WPF, Windows Presentation Foundation. Now I’m going to be honest and tell you right now that I had absolutely no idea what WPF was when I first started writing this article, so let me find you a more reliable explanation.
Windows Presentation Foundation (WPF) is the code-name of the presentation (user-interfaces) sub system in Windows Vista programming model and is used to create user interfaces.
Source: http://www.c-sharpcorner.com/Blogs/BlogDetail.aspx?BlogId=211
WPF is actually pre-installed in Windows Vista, but I was required to download .NET 3.0 framework in order to get this thing to work properly. Which then leads us to wonder…
Microsoft .NET Framework is a software component that is a part of Microsoft Windows operating systems. It has a large library of pre-coded solutions to common programming problems and manages the execution of programs written specifically for the framework. The .NET Framework is a key Microsoft offering and is intended to be used by most new applications created for the Windows platform.
The download and installation of the .NET 3.0 framework actually took a while. I’ll advise you against installing it during the hours where you are most productive and instead start it up before you sleep or something. But that’s just for impatient people like me, haha.
ViewOn isn’t exactly the most nimble media player available. It’s actually pretty darn sluggish sometimes, probably because it’s kind of processor and graphic-intensive. If running Windows Vista on your PC is already bogging you down, I wouldn’t recommend getting ViewOn, and probably getting something lighter like WinAmp.
Why do I put up with the sluggishness then? Because of its customizability. Crackers, it can be customized so that its colours suit your flavour and its graphics are sized to your preference. I know it doesn’t sound like much, but it actually makes the experience much better for me, personally.
I would definitely have put up with ViewOn even with its sluggishness if it weren’t for so many things wrong with it.
- It’s buggy, but it’s still in beta. Maybe I’ll try the final version.
- Its radio stations don’t work - which is partly why I downloaded it. Again, with the beta issue.
- The darn album art I worked so hard to collect doesn’t freaking work on ViewOn. What’s the point of the Coverflow-like feature if I have to go around collecting all that stuff again? Sorry, but that killed it for me. I quit ViewOn with the knowledge that getting album art on ViewOn will definitely not be as easy as it was on Windows Media Player 11 or iTunes because there simply wasn’t the database for it. Snickers.
Yeah, right. .NET 3.0 took a heck of a long time (like a whole hour, haha), ViewOn is sluggish, and there’s no album art! I don’t know which presses my cider more. And it’s beta software, which I once took an oath against - but for the sake of interest, I decided to break it just this once. So take my word, and don’t install it on your computer. It might look interesting, but it’s really not that great - it gets old, fast.
But if you know that you won’t be able to sleep until you actually tried it because you’re just like that, you can get it here.
Of course not! There are many various media players out there still waiting to be tested - and trust me, dMb will have a look to see which one reigns supreme!
Oh yeah, it’s purple. So what, a straight guy can’t like purple? Besides, it reminds me of the Zune - which is uber-nice but a bit thick. Great for playing digital media though (you knew I’d have to throw that in there).
