Mefeedia Gets Even Better
Published by Bre Pettis on 11 Aug 2005 at 12:06 pm.
2 Comments.
Filed under Vlog News.
Peter Van Dijck just can’t stop making mefeedia better.
Peter recently came out with an auto vlog archiving feature and he just keeps making it better and better. With this auto vlog archiving feature you make a new page or post and stick some code into it and it puts thumbnails of all your vlogposts on there.
I’m really excited about this feature and Peter agreed to answer some questions about it.
Peter, where did you get this auto archiving thumbnail feature idea?
I was visiting Jay’s place and Ryanne and Michael Verdi where there, and we got talking. At some point, they mentioned how hard it was to get an overview of your video archive, so I thought: “Hey, I could do that”. The functionality already existed in beta form on mefeedia, so I showed Ryanne how you could actually do it, and she was psyched. So I decided to make a nice page for it and improve the features a bit. It’s users and developers partying together - that’s where the magic happens.
Peter is a good listener. If you have a good idea for vloggers, he’s the man to implement it. I know enough about programming to know that it’s hard.
What were the obstacles when programming this feature?
Well, Mefeedia does all the hard work of gathering your archive and creating thumbnails for it. Right now, the biggest challenge is making it so that people can manage their own archive. For example, Michael Verdi has switched between blogging software in the past year, so that kind of messes up his archive. Also, the archive only goes back to December 2004. So I’m working on a new feature that lets people manage their archive themselves, so that everything shows up perfectly.
What kind of feedback have you had on this new feature?
Michael was telling me how the people he teaches how to videoblog always ask him to do an archive, and there was never an easy way to do it, especially not in a free tool like Blogger. On his own blog, he currently does it manually, creating a thumbnail for each video and adding that manually to his archive. So now, with this new feature, you can get an automagically updated archive, with thumbs, for free. It works in Blogger, Typepad, Wordpress, you name it. And did I mention that it’s free? And that it’s only a few minutes to set up? Yey!
The biggest deal, and it’s really kind of emotional and cool, is just seeing yourself in the past. Ryanne was watching those videos of herself in the past, and it’s just amazing, seeing what you were doing 6 months ago, what you were wearing… it’s like flipping through a video album of your life. You really should try it. And it only gets better, if you’ve been vlogging for a few weeks it’s alright, but if you’ve been vlogging for a year, you’re gonna see stuff you’d almost forgotten. Imagine what’ll happen if the archive is 5 years old! So much happens in a life.
Thanks Peter, I just set up a video archive for I Make Things! Now people will be able to go browse all my videos!
Clark Saturn on 13 Aug 2005 at 5:57 am: 1
Me too on ZipZapZop! Mefeedia’s Archive Thumbs turn your Vlog into a Vlorgy!
We Are The Media : Videoblogger Video Conference: Quicktime 7 - Hot ot Not? on 13 Aug 2005 at 1:27 pm: 2
[…] Today’s Flashmeeting video conference stirred some passions as several people debated the pro’s and con’s of using Apple’s Quicktime 7 with videoblogs. The participants also discussed the general topics of high definition (HD), making money with videoblogging, the new Mefeedia video thumbnails “hack”, the Webzine 2005 event and podcasting video with iTunes. The picture shows new member Kunga sharing his passion for HD with the group. Note how many of the participants now have “cams”. However, you don’t have to have a camera to participate, you can just use audio or even chat if you like. […]