I put up a long post at SplashCast this morning about how and why to tag video files. This is exactly the kind of thing I like to explore, make use of and write about. It’s got a chart, everybody loves charts. I’ll put the chart and the reasons why that I included in the post here but here’s the link to the full post. If you want to help it reach a larger audience on Digg, it’s doing pretty well so far but could use a hand getting over the hump.
Wanted to share this one here because I know some of you who read this blog don’t read the SplashCast blog, but this was one of my favorite posts that I’ve put up there in awhile. It’s even got a chart in it – everyone loves charts.
Why Would I Want to Tag Videos?
Here’s three reasons why you might want to tag videos in particular:
1. Personal Consumption You can tag videos into an RSS feed of your own creation, which in the best of situations can then be sent into media tools like iTunes, SplashCast and others. I’ve subscribed to the RSS feed in Del.icio.us for videos tagged web2.0 (in this case by myself or other users) and now I can watch them (format permitting, no .wmv) on my iPod. Sweet. I could also create a SplashCast show with this feed and watch it in a feed reader or start page.
2. Sharing With Others Why not create your own video highlights channel to share with your students if you’re a teacher, in your blog sidebar so your viewers can see your favorites (see the top of NewTeeVee, for example, where they use VodPod) or as part of a collaboratively edited news feed like one part of the nonprofit tech community does.
3. Because It’s a Good Idea Who knows what will come next from the innovative people who play with, create and build upon web applications? Video is important, and if you can assign your favorite videos URLs that you can easily access later and distribute by RSS feed now – that’s an unconditional good that will pay off even more in the future than it can today. It’s something like data backup, info asset export, knowing how much money you have in the bank, etc. If you work on the web, then the videos you watch now will be valuable to you later – so tag them!
If you want to give it some love on the way to the full post, go here.
One of my favorite clients that I’ve consulted with in recent weeks is a Massachusetts based company called Softrax. I helped put together a unique and powerful newswire system for their website RevenueRecognition.com. The site’s subtitle is “revenue management resources for today’s financial executive.”