Annotating online video with Veeple
Here's another application that might make videocasting more interesting, educational, and engaging for libraries and their customers. Veeple is a new online video tool that lets anyone add interactive, clickable spots (which they call "VeeSpots") to video. The spots can offer text, links to webpages, links to documents, PowerPoints, or PDFs, or to other video. One really simple example of how this would be useful in libraries would be for the library to create a video tour of the library with clickable spots that offered a pop-up text box with more information about that area or service (e.g. a link from the audiobook shelves might talk about the types of books, check-out period, etc.).
You can see examples of how this works in their "showroom." The service is free through March 2009, after which point the pricing kicks in ($49/month with additional charges for videos viewed more than 5,000 times per month). They talk about ads and ad revenue going to subscribers, but that's not in effect yet. So while it's still free, take a look, try it out, see if you like it, and see if your library would get $49/month's worth out of the product.
January 8th, 2009 at 12:27 am
Thanks for the blog on Veeple clickable video. You have hit the nail on the head regarding how libraries could use the service quite effectively. Today’s online viewing audience has little patience or long videos. But short videos often times have to leave out critical information that the content creator may want to convey. With Veeple clickable videos you get the best of both worlds – The ability to keep your video short and interesting and the ability to extend, deepen and enrich your message with clickable spots that the VIEWER chooses to engage with when they want. So as you pointed out the library video can cover the basics and clickable spots and links and/or downloadable documents can provide the viewer with much deeper information about the library and the services it provides – very cool. Thanks again for the post and we hope to see some libraries pick up the technology!