Tracking on-line video content
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A feature of the current online world is the proliferation of video content in education
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Quite a chunk of on-line video content is available as streaming media, where content is delivered and viewed in real-time.
NEW ON-LINE video content sources and the means to track them are discussed in this edition of NetSpeak.
A distinct feature of the current on-line world is the proliferation of video content in both educational and non-educational arena. Besides the existing video content sources (like the MIT Videos — http://mitworld.mit.edu/index.php — with videos of MIT public events/lectures), several new sources are emerging.
For instance, if you are a student of Statistics, you may appreciate the free on-line course on `Elementary Statistics' (http://sofia.fhda.edu/gallery/statistics/resources.html) hosted by `Sophia Open Content Initiative.' Besides text materials, videos of each of the lessons are also available. Apart from the course on Statistics, you will find a few more on-line courses such as Java Programming and Web Authoring in the course gallery (http://sofia.fhda.edu/gallery/).
Tutorials
`Free Video Tutorials' (http://www.video-tutes.com/), which hosts free video tutorials on several popular packages such as Dreamweaver, Flash and MS Word, is another educational video source. As mentioned in an earlier column (http://www.hindu.com/biz/2006/07/03/stories/2006070304381600.htm ), video blogging is one of the fast growing segments on the Net. To tap this opportunity many vlog generation services have joined the queue.
Other than the ones mentioned in the past (like BlogCheese), many new ones are being rolled out. The latest ones tried out by this author are Hellodeo (http://hellodeo.com/hello) and Grouper (http://grouper. com/). Both of them let you record/post video directly from your browser, without having to install a program.
Such video generation aids/services help in simplifying the on-line video content creation process. As a consequence, innumerable videos are getting transferred to the Net. Naturally, content explosion without any control adds to problems than bring solutions. Therefore, we need special search services to locate videos for our requirements.
The video search service Pixy (http://pixsy.com/) is one such product worth a try. Dabble (http://www.dabble.com/), the video search service that indexes a multitude of video hosting services such as Dailymotion, Ourmedia, YouTube and so on is another excellent tool for identifying video content.
One method to filter out content is by enlisting the community's opinion on them. `Video Bomb' (http://www.videobomb.com/) is one such service, where users vote the videos being submitted by the community members and thereby helps each other to filter out undesirable ones. Further, the service's web feed helps you track the latest postings with a news-feed reader. The free open source desktop video aggregator/player, `Democracy Player' (http://www.getdemocracy.com/), is a good product for this purpose. This software lets you track the latest videos by subscribing to video web feeds.
The `Internet TV Charts' (http://www.worldtv.com/charts/) may come in handy to keep up with latest video postings available on leading video hosting services such as YouTube and Google Video.
Quite a chunk of on-line video content is available as streaming media, where content is delivered and viewed in real-time. One shortcoming of this kind of real-time content delivery is that without a stable/fast Net link, smooth watching of the video will be tedious. Downloading the video file on to your local storage with a tool and viewing it off-line can counter this drawback. The free download manager, Gigaget (http://www.gigaget.com/) is a great tool for such needs. The software supports streaming protocols such as MMS and RTSP.
Another video related tool worth a mention is the Firefox extension VideoDownloader (https://addons.mozilla.org/firefox/2390/), developed for downloading the videos being viewed from video hosting services such as YouTube, Google Video, MySpace and so on, directly from your browser. This extension adds an icon on to the browser's status bar and to download the video being viewed, just click on this icon.'
As many of you may be aware, the availability of several open source hosting services facilitate the production of free, open source programs. Such services provide centralised, sharable repository with necessary tools for collaborative software development.
Hosting service
In an earlier column
(http://www.thehindu.com/2004/03/01/stories/2004030100331600.htm ),
NetSpeak discussed the features of popular software hosting services such as Sourceforge and BerliOS. Recent addition to this segment is `Google Code Project Hosting' (http://code.google.com/hosting/), the software hosting service from Google.
Picture editing service
Picture2life (http://www.picture2life.com/) is an on-line picture editing service that enables you to edit picture files from your web browser. For this you do not need to install an image-editing program. Pictures posted on a picture hosting service (like Flicker) can also be edited. Another advantage lies in the availability of browser add-on/extension for helping you easily edit a picture on a web page by right-clicking on it.
J. MURALI
He can be contacted at: jmurali@gmail.com
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