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CNET Networks)
Pixelpipe, the multi-service file uploader and metadata management tool, has a new experimental Firefox extension out that should delight its regular users. It adds a sidebar to your browser where you can simply drag and drop digital media from your hard drive or things you find on the Web to upload directly to your Pixelpipe account.
Once you've picked all the items you want to upload, you hit a single button and it sends it off to Pixelpipe, which will instantly distribute it to all the services you have turned on by default. These can't be edited right from the sidebar, but there's a quick shortcut button that will take you to your settings page where you can turn certain services on or off.
You can also pick the privacy level of the upload to Pixelpipe itself, which can limit who is able to see what you've uploaded based on your relationship with them.
If you're a heavy Pixelpipe user this is definitely worth a download. I only hope that in future versions it will let you toggle the services you want on and off from the sidebar itself, and without the user having to visit the site. I'd also like to see it add a little microblogging tool like it has on the site, so you could use it to send out a short message or blog post to multiple services.
Previously: Pixelpipe lets you easily mass distribute media
Ever been stuck waiting, and waiting, and waiting some more for photos to upload? Short of getting a faster connection there's not much you can do with big image files. You can go the software route, and download something free and simple like Paint.net to do the resizing pre-upload, but you don't always have time to do this with every shot, and if you're like me you're kind of lazy.
Enter Shrunked, a great new extension for Firefox. It lets you resize a photo before uploading it. It works anywhere that doesn't use a Java applet or snazzy Flash uploader (so no Facebook or Flickr via their multi-image uploaders). When the extension detects that you're trying to upload photos it gives you the option to resize them to one of three presets, along with a custom size where you can set the width or height while keeping the aspect ratio the same.
There are several uses for this, with one of the best ones being profile photos for social networks. Most of these sites have resizing tools on the server side that will do the same thing, but again if you're on a slow connection, waiting for that 5MB or 6MB file to get there can be a drag.
Shrunked resizes your photos before you upload them--saving you some time and the need to use unnecessary software.
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Google's latest version of its software-based Picasa uploader for Mac has a handy new trick up its sleeve. It now lets you download entire albums back to your computer, making it a simple tool for backing up large photo libraries.
The Windows and Linux version of Picasa have allowed you to do this for some time, but seeing as Mac users do not (yet) have a version of Picasa to call their own, this is a far better option than downloading the originals one at a time from the Web, or having to use third-party programs.
I gave it a spin this morning, and it's incredibly easy to pull in several albums one after another. The one thing it cannot do, however, is grab your videos; Google says that's coming in a later release.
Google is widely expected to release a Mac version of Picasa at next year's MacWorld Expo, taking place in early January.
See also: Picasa Web Albums Assistant 0.3
Picasa's Web albums uploader has a new option to download entire albums, something users of the PC program have been able to do for a while now.
(Credit: CNET Networks)Over the weekend YouTube quietly began testing a new uploading tool for users to publish their videos. The tool now allows users to begin plugging in information fields about the video while the upload is happening, much like Viddler, Vimeo, and others have offered for years. The company is testing the new player with a small number of its users, although you can access it with a special link.
The new uploader lets you edit data while the video is uploading. (Click to enlarge.)
(Credit: CNET Networks)The company has also increased the size limit of uploaded video files from 100MB to 1GB. This should open things up dramatically for people who are shooting in high-quality VGA video mode on their digital cameras, something that can turn a one-minute video capture into files that would have exceeded the previous limits.
The updated uploader also now lets users upload multiple video files at once. You can either do this when selecting the file, or while any previous videos are in the process of being uploaded. The tool allows for up to 10 videos a time, which means you can start up additional clips as soon as older ones have made it through. Doing so does not interrupt whatever file is currently uploading, which is a nice touch.
Two things that have not changed with the uploading process are the video time limits and long processing times, both of which are the same. Videos are capped at 10 minutes, and you still have to wait longer than your video's length for the system to process your video for viewing. As for the processing, there's nothing you can do, however, if you want to get longer-form videos on the service you can try your luck at becoming a YouTube partner which lifts the cap.
If you liked Ping.fm you've got to check out Pixelpipe. It's a service that's been designed for lazy (yet ambitious) folks who want to send photos, videos, and audio clips to multiple services with just one upload.
Like Ping.fm and Hey!Spread all you have to do is plug in your credentials at each service and it does the work for you. There's a simple Web uploader that lets you pick as many files as you want from a memory card or your hard drive and send them on their way. Repeat users can also pick one of the cross-platform software tools that runs on its own or integrates with existing software like iPhoto and Firefox.
See where your media has gone with Pixelpipe.
(Credit: CNET Networks)No matter what uploading tool you're using it will keep track of your most recent uploads and give you a status of which services got your media including a link to the specific page where it resides (see the photo on the left for what it looks like).
In case you're worried about those racy party pics ending up on the Flickr account to which mom and dad subscribe, you can disable certain services (or "pipes") from getting the transfer. Starting Tuesday the service will be adding a tagging feature that lets you custom tailor your uploads to go to certain sets of services using small keywords instead of having to enter the settings menu each time you want to make changes.
Also coming soon is an iPhone app that will do this with photos taken on the device's camera. Creator Brett Butterfield tells me one of the benefits here is that you only need to upload it to one place, removing the need to save various upload e-mail addresses or use Apple's mail client that shrinks the photos down. It also preserves things like embedded geo-data, letting your shots get mapped to services that support it.
Openness/Invites
While I'm a fan of making it easier to push the same piece of data to multiple services, ultimately Pixelpipe is a bandage on the wound that is data portability. Services like FriendFeed and SocialThing have risen up to help sort through the mess, and Pixelpipe is a result of what happens the data you upload to one service cannot be moved to another. Sure it's handy and I think I'm going to be a regular user, but I can't help but think this would be a whole lot easier if everything were a bit more open.
That said, this is a killer tool for movie creators. If you've been paying for a tool like Hey!Spread simply to do the uploading, now you've got a free option. It certainly doesn't have the analytical prowess to see what happens to your content once it gets there, but if you're just worried about getting it out in the first place this is one of the easiest and most user-friendly solutions I've seen.
Pixelpipe is currently in private beta, although we've been given 1,000 invites to give out. To get yours just hit up this page. And as a word of advice for using any service where you're giving multiple account authorizations to, it's a good idea to make a strong password to keep someone from working their way in and mass publishing media to your various accounts.
Related: Send your viral video to 20 different video hosts with HeySpread
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CNET Networks)
On Monday, video host Vimeo announced it would no longer allow video game-related content to be uploaded to its site. According to the post on the company blog, this includes "game walk-throughs, game strategy videos, depictions of player vs. player battles, raids, fraps, or any other video gaming videos that simply depict individuals playing a video game."
The post goes on to mention that the reason for the new ban is twofold: one, for the sake of the company's servers which have slowed to a crawl having to transcode all of this content, as well as what community director Blake Whitman calls a lack of "creative expression" from people simply holding down the record button for content that statistically has ended up being larger, and longer, than the majority of that found on the rest of the site.
The good news is that not all video game-related videos will be getting the axe. For example, machinima, which uses video games as a platform to create scripted stories, will not be deleted. Also, any game-related clips that have been uploaded to the service and that are scheduled for removal will be hosted until September 1, giving creators over a month to get it off and hosted elsewhere.
There are several sites that specialize in video game clips. One of the more popular ones out there, and my personal favorite, is WeGame, which has far more generous upload limits and video transfer from YouTube. For many, I think the reason to flock to Vimeo was simply the quality, as the site is one of the few to offer high-definition video hosting and playback, as well as download links to grab the original files.
Google's Vidnik lets users take videos, trim them, and upload them to YouTube.
(Credit: Google)Google has released basic software called Vidnik that lets Mac OS X users record video with a Webcam or built-in camera, trim its length, add tags and a title, then upload it to YouTube.
The software also can be used to upload other videos to the company's video-sharing site, and other editing software can be used on the videos taken by Vidnik, David Phillip Oster of Google's Mac team said in a blog posting.
The software is among a host of Mac applications the company has produced. (Another interesting one is Visigami, which lets people search for images on Flickr, Picasa, and Google Images and use the results as an animated screensaver.)
Google has an increasing stable of software that runs on people's computers--Google Desktop is one good example--and is working on mobile phone applications, too, through its Android project. But don't be confused by all this attention to what's known as client software: the company's higher priority is to make the Internet the application foundation of choice.
Up until today, only Windows Mobile 5 and 6 and BlackBerry users could take CellSpin's mobile blogging and media-sharing platform for, well, a spin. On Thursday the San Jose, Calif. company announced a big addition to the family: phones on the Symbian platform.
Adding Symbian cell phones, many of them high-end, brings CellSpin's free beta service to over 300 handsets and over 30 carriers worldwide.
CellSpinners can quickly share photos, video, text, and audio to Blogger, eBay, Facebook, YouTube, Picasa, LiveJournal, Flickr, and Windows Live Spaces, with more partnerships on the way. Of course, there are a few limitations brought on by the partner sites. YouTube only accepts video submissions, for example, and photos are the only media that can be uploaded to Flickr, Picasa, and Facebook. The blogging sites and eBay accept all four media types.
Much like Google Video's software uploader, YouTube now has a multifile uploader of its own. While you can still upload up to 100 MB files through YouTube's Web interface, having installed the small piece of Windows software (Mac version coming soon), YouTubers are now able upload several video files at once, at up to 1GB a pop, which is 10x the size of the standard uploader. Interestingly enough, you still have to go through a Web interface, even with the software installed on your machine. The processing is still (thankfully) done on YouTube's servers, which the company says can take up to a half hour to crunch the larger or more complex video files.
Like the single file uploader, the multivideo iteration lets you change tags and edit the options of each video, although there are no batch functions, which is slightly disappointing. Also disappointing is that despite the bump in size limitations, Google is still capping videos to 10 minutes, although if you're making original content, you can probably finagle a director account, or other specialty classification pretty easily, which doesn't have such restrictions.
[via Read/WriteWeb]
Upload multiple video files at a time with YouTube's new multifile video uploader.
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Foldr Monitr interface
(Credit: RebelEOS.com)Photo sharing sites like Flickr, Webshots (a CNET affiliate), Zoomr, SmugMug, and others provide a cheap (usually free) and easy way for users to share their digital pics with friends, family, or the site communities at large. There's always a slight delay, however, between downloading pictures from your camera or cell phone and actually getting them published to those sites. If you're a Flickr user, you can eliminate that delay completely with Foldr Monitr, a free utility that automatically uploads images from specified folders on your hard drive to your Flickr account.
Foldr Monitr works nearly as simply and effectively as its description promises. After installing and running the app, you'll need to "authenticate" Foldr Monitr with your Flickr account. Clicking the "Authenticate" button in the Foldr Monitr interface will load the Flickr authorization page, launching your default Web browser if it's not already running. After authenticating Foldr Monitr on the Flickr Web site, you're not finished. Click the "Finish Authentication" button in the Foldr Monitr interface to complete your login. ... Read more
