With so much information flowing by and the increasing need to filter it one finds oneself longing for simplicity. In my rediscovery of Netvibes after leaving it idle for a long time I also came to reflect upon various video uploading sites such a YouTube, Vimeo and Viddler.
I have used Netvibes for a while and prefer it to Google Reader for many reasons. It’s neater, more customizable, more versatile and slicker. I particularly like the public option (which I’m aware of in Google Reader as well), which gives you an opportunity to showcase your online persona in a simple fashion.
I made a simple screencast using Quicktime X for the first time, and uploaded it to my long idle YouTube channel. QT was simple to use and uploading to YouTube even simpler. What I discovered with Youtube, which is new since I last visited my channel is the way you can customize and add music, annotations, captions and subtitles in a very straightforward interface. I know this is not a revelation, and I’m a late adopter here, but I have used Vimeo or Viddler the past year as I wanted something less cluttered. I still find YouTube indeed cluttered, but it seems to move in the right direction.
It would then perhaps be interesting to use YouTube in an educational way in a media project where students produce short films and use the features to create a channel with focus for discussion on branding and viral media? Just an idea.
The published video is then a result of playing around with the abovementioned features such as AudioSwap and Annotations. Apologies for the music.
