video

My favorite videos that are marketing / HR / recruiting tools

Some smart companies are creating videos that not only are fun to watch, but truly act as a recruiting tool for their companies / services. So while some of these sites rely on social media / UGC, they are seeding their own services by creating content for their own site as a way to kick things off.

A few examples:

1) I saw this one a few months ago, and my first reaction was “I would love to work there”:

We did this video one night after work. We are a company called Connected Ventures, a group of friends who work for: Vimeo, CollegeHumor, Busted Tees, and Defunker… and, we’re hiring: connectedventures.com/jobs.shtml

watch video here

2) And this one most recently is a farce on raising money from VCs ( in hebrew, but with subtitles ), promoting their new how-to video site 5min (thanks Ouriel).

5min is a place to find short video solutions for every
practical question and is also a place for people who want to share their knowledge.

watch video here

3) And of course, FunnyorDie which launched ( I believe ) with the first episode of “The Landlord”: watch video here

4) Our very own beta video player on wordpress.com was launched featuring Matt and Barry “after-hours”. Click to watch.

5) And lastly, one of my favorites, from the Gmail team, which is a cross of a screencast and a puppet show 🙂

Wallstrip now part of the CBS family

wallstrip

Congrats to the fantastic team at Wallstrip — Howard, Lindsay, Adam and the rest of the crew. From the CBS press release:

CBS Interactive today announced the acquisition of Wallstrip, an online property that produces and syndicates a daily webshow focused on financial news. The acquisition was first referenced in Wallstrip’s program this morning.

Wallstrip has been a must-see for me everyday, and I always point to it as an example of how web video should be created. It’s well produced, takes advantage of the visual medium, teaches me something, and keeps my attention for 2.5 minutes — that’s all I want !

Howard Lindzon details the incredible journey in his blog post, and Trader Mike has complete coverage here. After only a few months and some seed money they’ve taken their business to the next level.

The other takeaway that’s very obvious is just how easy Wallstrip made the content consumable and easy to find/subscribe. As you can see in their right nav slogan “Watch Wallstrip where YOU want!”.

Video: They had their videos on the site (obviosuly), but also on youtube, revver, iTunes, veoh, and other major video platform.

Widget: They built a widget so any blogger could embed the video.

SEO: They built the site using WordPress, which has great built in SEO, and they blogged and got links from their great network of colleagues and fans.

Subscription: They offered up various RSS feeds, myYahoo links, and an email option too.

Bottom line — they created great content, were smart about distribution and promotion, and chose best of breed technologies and partners.

“A Morphable Model of 3D Faces”

via wired.com’s blog table of Malcontents:

Volker Blanz and Thomas Vetter of the MPI for Biological Cybernetics in Germany have come up with a morphable model for three-dimensional faces. What their system does is build a single master face out of a series of two hundred source faces, differentiated from one another by a vast spectrum of different features. This master face can then be easily morphed into any combination of features, allowing it to easily transform into any possible face (barring disfigurement).

But it gets cooler. The program can take a single 2D image of someone’s face and create a completely accurate 3D head model. Tom Hanks and Audrey Hepburn are the source images they use to demonstrate the process and the result is eerie and nearly indistinguishable.

Apple TV – thoughts on other devices and media implications

apple tv

Apple TV (AAPL) is getting good reviews so far, and the inevitable hacking has also begun that i’m sure will extend the functionality ( and void the warranty ! )

For me, I’m holding off for now. I usually try to buy the 2nd generation of most new product ( I bought the iPod nano, not the Mini – recommended the treo 650, not the 600, etc ). I’m also keeping an eye on the slingboxpro which looks really compelling and adds the mobile feature that I’m really keen on getting.

The big news in my mind with Apple TV and other similar devices is not watching Lost via iTunes on the big screen (although that’s nice), but rather the democratization and leveling off of the playing field that these devices create.

Ask a Ninja, Tikki bar tv, diggnation and other great video podcasts are now on equal footing for my attention when I have an hour to kick back on the couch and watch something fun. Production values/costs are obviously different, but I really just want to be entertained, and some of these podcasts do a great job at that. Couple this Apple TV movement with cheap Sony HD cameras, and you really start seeing the shifting landscape.