New service Embedit.in is launching on Tuesday with a tool that lets users host documents up to 20MB in size. Like Scribd, DocStoc, and others, Embedit.in uses Adobe Flash to power a viewer that lets users flip and scroll through pages in long documents.
As the name suggests, documents can be embedded either as a thumbnail that opens up to an overlay of the document reader, or as an embedded player like what you see lower down on this story. In either case, the service doesn't take visitors off whatever site they're on to let them see the content, which is nice.
Along with items users have uploaded individually, Embedit.in can be installed in the source code on any site. This turns any outgoing URLs that link to compatible document files into hosted Embedit.in docs. Each time it discovers a newly-added item it simply downloads it in the background, then reassigns the link.
http://i.i.com.com/cnwk.1d/i/bto/20090616/EmbedIt-in-inaction.png
(Credit: CNET)One area where Embedit.in differs from competing services is in letting users make small cosmetic changes to documents after they've been uploaded. To do this, it uses markup tools from parent company Increo's sister project, Backboard. This allows for simple things like highlighting, underlining, and circling. Missing, however, are some of the more advanced items like being able to add new chunks of text or images, or let users go in and make edits to the existing copy.
Embedit.in also has its own analytics dashboard for each document. This shows you how many views a document has, where viewers are from, how many times they've printed or downloaded a local copy, as well as a heat map of where user attention has been. It does this by tracking what parts of the document people have spent the most time on, and can be quite fun to look at if you've hosted something with images.
Embedit.in is very slick but misses some things I think are quite important. For one... Read more
Unless you've been living under a rock for the past three years you've watched a YouTube video off of YouTube.com. So many viewers watch videos this way (YouTube says it's 44 percent of viewership), the company has overhauled its player, making several of the site's latest features available off of YouTube's site.
The biggest change is the inclusion of annotations and closed captions, meaning if you're watching a video that has them added you'll see them as the video plays. This includes the latest translation feature too, so if you're watching a foreign video with foreign subtitles you can translate it in real-time.
Additionally, YouTube now includes a search bar on the top of the player, which appears with related videos as soon as you finish watching. The results show up within the player, so if you've got an embedded video on your blog it's not going to jettison your users somewhere else.
Still missing from the embedded player is a way to tweak between low and high quality, view and leave comments, and get the quick links to share videos on social networks--all things you can do on YouTube's site.
You can see a quick overview of the new tweaks in the video below:
Been looking for a way to get a Flickr slide show on your blog or Facebook profile? Check out SlideFlickr, a dead simple tool for pulling in albums or photo streams in an embeddable slide show. Just drop in a Flickr username, or a URL for a group, photo set, or tag, and hit a big pink button. SlideFlickr will spit out some embed code you can plug into your blog, Web site, or social networking profile. If you're interested in a simpler solution, they've also got a Facebook application that lets you add your SlideFlickr slide shows by copying and pasting over an eight-digit slide show identification code. It will then place the slide show on your profile for everyone to see.
SlideFlickr's slide shows mimic Flickr's, with simple back and forth buttons and an upcoming stream of photos on the bottom. I've embedded a small one with some iPod Nano photos below.
Related:
Hands-on with Flektor's content creator
Weekend Webware: Slidez photo slide shows
Weekend Webware: Goodwidgets makes for snazzy photo sharing
SplashCast is launching a handful of updates to its player this morning. The biggest is inline chat, which was essentially the next step after last month's inclusion of inline text, voice, and video commenting. Although this new feature isn't rolling out to everyone right away--the company is beginning with the branded artist channels launched a few months back. To jump into a chat, there's a simple "join chat" button on the bottom-left-hand side of the player. Clicking it takes you right in to an IRC-style simple chat.
Want to Twitter about the show you're watching? You can now do it right inside of Twitter.
(Credit: CNET Networks)Also new is a feature called FanCast which is kind of like Kyte.TV in that you can give your users an e-mail address to send photos and videos, and they'll go up in an ad-hoc playlist made available to all. If you're the channel owner, you can also moderate that content, keeping some amount of editorial control over what your viewers are adding to the conversation.
SplashCast is also adding integration to Twitter. The service gets its very own icon, which, when clicked, lets you log in to your Twitter account and post a brief note along with a link to the show as a status update. If you're already using another service like TwitThis (review), this might not be so important, but unlike sharing the whole player, you can drill down and share any piece of media therein.
I've embedded an example player after the break. To view it, click the read more button below.
... Read more
Video hosting and mashup solution SplashCast is launching an upgrade to their video player tomorrow morning. The most noticeable change is a new YouTube-ish playlist of video thumbnails in the bottom 20 percent of the viewer, which can be pulled up and dismissed at the user's discretion. Previously, users were limited to a channel-view text list (which is still available), but my bet is that users will feel at home with this newer navigation.
The real killer application, however, is the inline commenting system which gives users three ways to leave their feedback: a video clip (from a Webcam or hard drive), text, and voice. All three remain in the same section, and there's no user registration required to leave your two cents. Recording and playing video in the player is really simple, and looks pretty good.
There are a few other mentionable tweaks, including a pause button, an inline "e-mail this" tool to share show segments or entire programs with friends, and a full screen button that remains no matter what type of program you're viewing (not just videos and photos). There's also a new "follow me" button which lets you know when the program's creator publishes new shows. It's a little bit like the channel-creator subscriptions with YouTube.
SplashCast is planning to introduce a mobile upload feature to its platform within a month, so users will be able to drop photos and video clips into their channels from a mobile phone--a lot like Kyte.tv (review). There will also be more celebrity channels, and the potential for Twitter integration and live user chat, similar to Pikspot's player.
You can now check out a video playlist with thumbnails that move a little bit like the dock in Mac OS X.
(Credit: CNET Networks)
That handy new no-nonsense embedding feature for Google Maps has gone live today. Clicking the "link to this page" option on the top right of any map will give you quick and dirty embed code to place into any blog or Web site that supports it. There's also an advanced option set to tweak the size from small, medium, large, or custom like I've done with the one embedded below. Instead of using Adobe Flash, Google employs an iframe to simply load the page within the page.
This is a far easier solution than tracking down an API key and hard coding embed information. Google is claiming the new system is "YouTube-style," which to a certain extent is true, except lately YouTube's embeds are looking ages beyond this. Still missing is StreetView, which I think would take this feature to the next level.
To embed a map on any page, just click the 'link to this page' URL on the top right, and grab the code.
(Credit: CNET Networks)
Slidez is a new photo slide show tool for showing off photos on blogs, Web sites, and social networking profiles. Slidez pulls double duty as a hosting service and presentation tool, allowing users to upload and organize their photo library online. It's not a substitute for photo-hosting services like Flickr, Photobucket, or Yahoo Photos, but its embeddable slide shows are good-looking, and easy to put together.
Basic photo management is kept simple with a batch uploader that allows you to select multiple photos from your hard drive. As a test batch I uploaded 20 shots without a problem. Your photos reside in a master library, where they can be dragged into individual albums called "presentations." To re-order shots within a presentation, just drag and drop photos like you would in a software app like iPhoto or Picasa.
To share a photo show, just click the Share button. This will pull up options to send the URL to the show via e-mail, embed it as a slide show, or grab the XML feed for people to subscribe to using their favorite reader.
The slide show arena is a crowded space with services like Slide, RockYou, Vmix, Goodwidgets, Splashcast, and Badgr. Admittedly, most of those services have their sights on MySpace and other social networking sites. Slidez seems aimed at people who want to make and send a slide show without fuss and it manages to do a good job.
Searchles, the social network that launched last June, has rolled out a new feature called Searchles TV, which lets you combine multiple clips from multiple services to share elsewhere in an embeddable player. Similar to SplashCast (see previous coverage), you can jog back and forth between clips without leaving the player. Searchles works with videos from YouTube, MySpace, Google Video, Grouper and Blip.tv, and plans to add more partners in the future.
What's neat about Searchles TV is that embedded players will reflect any changes you make to the master feed. SplashCast does this too, and it works really well if you want to showcase different content without having to change the embed code on a blog or Web site. This can be especially helpful in a site like MySpace, where making changes to the code can get a little tedious.
Here's a Searchles TV spot I created in about two minutes.
Embeddable video is getting pretty cool. Static preview images seem to be a thing of the past. Blinkx, which is showcasing its service today at Demo 2007, is announcing a new widget called 'Blinkx It' that crawls your blog or Web site to deliver contextual video content. Think of it as Google Ad Sense with videos and no advertising. For example, clicking the 'Blinkx It' widget below will bring up videos related to News.com stories:
This is nice and unobtrusive, but the results aren't necessarily pertinent. In most cases, I was unable to get a smattering of relevant videos with URLs from CNET, Apple.com, and even the NFL. There are some options to tweak how well the widget scrapes for data, but this involves changing code on your Web site, or giving your posts metatags.
What's far cooler--and pulls up slightly more relevant results--is Blinkx's embeddable video preview 'walls.' These let you group together several pieces of video content in one embedded array. Clicking any of the motion thumbnails will take you to the site where the video is located. I've put together one for CNET-related results at the bottom of this post
It's easy to create walls like this. You can quickly choose how many rows and columns you want right from the Blinkx search results. Clicking these thumbnails takes you to the video's source. Also neat is the ability to scroll through pages of content, letting you pack more videos into one embedded array. When using Blinkx's search engine, you can watch the first 30 seconds of each video without leaving the results.
For another multivideo embedding tool, check out SplashCast which we covered yesterday.
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