Heartfelt Widget for New Vloggers
Published by Jennifer Rundle on 8 Oct 2005 at 2:01 pm.
3 Comments.
Filed under Product Reviews, Vlog News.
Watching vlogs has gotten exponentially easier due to the great innovations by vloggers; aggregators such as Mefeedia, video blogging services such as Blip.tv, automatic caches such as FireAnt, tutorials such as those at Freevlog, and the up-and-coming Flock browser have made viewing vlogs as easy as the click of a button. FireAnt in particular has made it convenient to download your favorite videos easily without even having to visit the site. However, with all of this convenience, coupled with the increasing popularity of vlogging, it has become more difficult to easily find new vloggers to watch and support.
So how does someone find new vloggers to view and support? Answer: The Widget.
Peter Van Dijck over at Mefeedia has joined forces with Ryanne Hodson at Freevlog to create a software “Widget” that identifies new videobloggers for you by listing the site names right on the Widget. This heart-shaped icon sits on your desktop or dashboard and tells you how many new vloggers it contains at any one time. The icon was designed by Hodson and inspired by the work of the Lisa Frank Sticker Company and Paper Rad. The Widget is powered by Mefeedia and is compatible with both Macs and PCs (Please note: to install the Widget on a Mac you need Mac OSX Tiger).
The idea behind the Widget is twofold: to enable viewers to find fresh new material and to encourage viewers to support new vloggers. This is great news for us over at WATM because we are always looking for new and interesting material; it is even better news for new vloggers, as they now have a way to be featured artists with a much higher profile than before the Widget.
One last note: Van Dijck and Hodson designed the Widget to be open source, so feel free to change it as you like; just make sure to credit Mefeedia and Freevlog. So get on over to Freevlog to download the Widget and start watching new vloggers–and don’t forget to leave supportive comments on their sites!
ZuDfunck on 10 Oct 2005 at 4:00 am: 1
What a Clever Idea!
Has anyone loaded it?
mike on 10 Oct 2005 at 6:40 am: 2
Hey Jennifer,
Just wanted to mention that blip is more a video blogging service than an aggregator. We’d actually recommend using Mefeedia for aggregation
Bre Pettis on 10 Oct 2005 at 12:30 pm: 3
I downloaded it. It’s cool to track how many vlogs are in the mefeedia feed and to see the latest new vlogs over at freevlog.