I was at a friend’s house the other weekend, who’d suggested we all pile back to his at the end of the night. In the near past (i.e. last year!) this would have involved a dubious CD of his choice and maybe a DVD or video game (depending on our energy levels and co-ordination - in other words, how drunk we were all feeling!)

This time, though, it involved music selected by all of us from Spotify, which never fails to deliver, followed by an hour two spent trawling through the archives of YouTube, which was hooked up to his impressive Samsung HDTV.

Viewing YouTube on an HDTV makes so much more sense than viewing it through a PC. Just seeing it on your telly makes for a much more sociable (not to mention comfortable) experience. It seems so less geeky, and therefore just as valid a piece of evening entertainment as a DVD.

In fact, it was so easy to dip into, it felt natural to everyone watching it - well, as natural as watching Stavros Flatley can be!!

What was intriguing, though, was how everyone came alive once the 3 minute clip had ended. ‘Is Susan Boyle on there?’ asked one deluded friend. She was.

‘I saw a clip on a riduclous wedding’ shouted another as soon as SuBo had finished warbling. A quick search later and up it came, followed in quick order by other ‘amusing’ wedding clips, various clips of car crashes, and the chinese guy who pushed a suicidal man off a bridge because he was holding up rush hour traffic (he survived).

All of this, of course, is familiar to regular YouTubers. What was unfamiliar to us all, though, was the context - someone’s lounge after the pub.

It was immediately familiar, yet much more fun than watching static video or TV. People were sharing their own favourite clips, which we all laughed at or mocked. Each clip was short enough to ensure no-one got bored. And none of it, not a single second, involved terrestrial or satellite TV. If I was a traditional broadcaster, I’d be seriously worried!

What this made me realize (apart from how differently my brain works when drunk if this is what I was thinking about!) is how much the Web is changing the way we entertain ourselves.

YouTube’s been around for three years, now, and HDTV much longer. Mix the two together, though, and you have a brilliant new way of entertaining you and your friends after a merry evening of drunkenness that really is non-geeky!

What I think is missing, though, and where there must be a huge opportunity, is a Spotify for music. The ability to create a playlist of favourite clips that everyone can contribute to, so that you get home and watch what is, effectively, your group’s own personalized TV channel, all selected by members of the group.

This is a huge opportunity for someone. Individual clips are fine, but having a pre-selected channel of group-selected content, chosen before an event before people get too drunk to think, is what the market’s crying out for.

I’m sure something like this must already exist, but if it does, it isn’t exactly heavily promoted. I’ll do some digging and see what I can find.

In the meantime, if you know of a service or Web app that acts like Spotify for video, feel free to add it in the comments below.

This is a post from the gadget blog, MediaMentalism.com. For 100s of articles and How To's on HDTVs, Blu-Ray players, media streamers, MP3 and PMP players, come check us out

Freshen up your Friday nights with Spotify and YouTube

• How to make an iPhone/iPod stand
• Spotify music streaming review - one go and you’re hooked!
• Slackers make iPods obsolete
• How to watch free internet television
• 3D holograms will replace HDTV

Gadgets that capture your location

Just some of the gadgets available to you for capturing your location include:

• Stand alone GPS devices - the latest Sat-Navs from the likes of Tom Tom and Garmin don’t just tell you where you are, they let you take Geocoded pics and videos and even
• Cameras with built-in GPS . Try the Nikon P6000, or read about the dozens of different GPS camera options available to you.
• Camcorders with GPS - the first consumer models will be the Sony Handycam HDR-XR500 and XR520, both of which will feature built-in GPS and geotagging of your videos when they’re released, later in 2009.
• Cameraphones with GPS, including the Nokia N95, N82, N96 and E90, the LG Renoir II KC910, and the Samsung Omnia i900, or the superb 8 megapixel Sony Ericsson C905.
• Location-aware Browsers - Mozilla’s Geode extension for Firefox works out where your laptop is from the proximity of nearby networks
• USB or Bluetooth GPS devices - useful if you want more accurate results than network triangulation. Try the Garmin Mobile PC, for example, available in both USB and Bluetooth versions.
• Add on gadgets - if you can’t afford a gadget with built-in GPS, try the tiny Sony GPS-CS1, which adds geocoded data onto your pictures and videos after you’ve taken them - even if you’re nowhere near the location where they were taken from!

Geotagging sites for showing off your location

Capturing your location is one thing - what do you do with it once you’ve got it?

Simple - you upload your pictures, videos or text to the site of your choice and let it display your travels on a fully interactive map, so your fans can follow you wherever you go. Just some of the sites you could use include:

• Flickr, Picasa, Panoramio, SmugMug, Locr, Fotonauts and dozens of other image sites,which can all display geotagged images on an interactive map
• Feedburner - lets you stamp your co-ordinates on your blog’s RSS feed. Try mixing Geode with Feedburner for automatic geo-blogging.
• Plazes and Brightkite - social networks that focus on telling the world and your fans where you are.

Geotagging is still in its infancy, and although there are several handy guides on what you’ll need to do it, it can be difficult to setup, particularly if your device isn’t designed to support it. Some phones, for example, despite coming with GPS built-in, won’t automatically geotag your photos.

Fortunately, you can install software such as ShoZu, which will not only automatically geotag your images and pics for you, it’ll also upload the content to Flickr, YouTube, or many other sites, with the geotag info all ready to use by the site of your choice.

If you’re tech-savvy, you might like to try out Yahoo!s FireEagle, which takes your location from many different devices and lets you export it to dozens of different sites in all manner of different ways. With FireEagle, for example, you could create a widget that puts your current location on a blog, or which updates your Facebook status or loyal Twitter followers with your location. You’re a social media rockstar, remember, with profiles and accounts in tonnes of different social networks. Update them all with your location with FireEagle, and literally let your followers follow you!

FireEagle’s not for the faint-hearted, though, but again there are some useful FireEagle tutorials out there to help you get the most from it.

If you want a simpler way of using FireEagle to update your location to the hundreds of social networks you belong to, let Plazes do it for you.

Summary

If this has whetted your appetite for Geoblogging, have a look at the many Geotagging sites that make innovative use of the geotagged info you provide.

What are you waiting for? You want to be a social media rockstar - get out there and show the world where you are!

This has been the last in a series of posts on how to use the very latest gadgets and social media sites to get yourself Internet famous. You can read the rest of the posts at:

• What YouTube camera to buy
• The video sites that are better than YouTube
• How to succeed with online video
• The gadgets you need to become Internet famous

If you like this post, consider subscribing to our RSS feed, or else follow me on Twitter.

This is a post from the gadget blog, MediaMentalism.com. For 100s of articles and How To's on HDTVs, Blu-Ray players, media streamers, MP3 and PMP players, come check us out

Beyond Twitter: How to use GeoBlogging to catch the next social media wave

• Social Media mentalism - the gadgets you need to rock the social media world
• 15 video sites better than YouTube
• 5 gadgets no social media celeb should be without
• The best YouTube cameras to make you a YouTube Superstar
• Sony to release touchscreen Walkman at CES 2009

Really? You’re comparing Twitter to Email and IM?

OK, just do the following:

Write an email of 140 characters to whoever you want and press send. Then write the same message on Twitter, then again on Facebook, then on your blog, then again on your mobile phone via SMS.

Notice how you feel each time? That’s right, a little bit different according to the medium your using.

To be more precise, it’s the *audience* that dictates your reaction.

Sending an email or using instant messenger is very different from tweeting, because the audience is very different. With email and IM, you know the people you’re communicating with, and they have no choice but to listen to you.

With Twitter, you don’t necessarily know who you’re communicating with, but you do know you have an audience who have decided to listen to you based on what you’ve previously tweeted. It’s their choice to listen, which is completely different from Email in particular, where you have absolutely no choice but to read. As for IM, there’s no concept of the communication being stored, you talk to your audience rather than your audience choosing to listen to you, and, crucially (you’d think!) for Google, your conversation isn’t searchable at a later date.

How many IM conversations have you had that appear on Google?!

Marshall McLuhan may have famously said that “the medium is the message” but with the new ways of communicating online, it’s the audience who receives the message and how they choose to do so that matters more.

Perhaps Schmidt should use these “poor man’s email systems” a bit more himself before casting judgment!

[Source: Business Insider, via Pocket Lint]

This is a post from the gadget blog, MediaMentalism.com. For 100s of articles and How To's on HDTVs, Blu-Ray players, media streamers, MP3 and PMP players, come check us out

Google CEO bashes Twitter

• 15 video sites better than YouTube
• Stephen Fry, the Oscar Wilde of Generation Twitter
• Google’s Set Top Boxes offer Android TV
• Logitech Squeezebox Duet beats 578 Hi-Fi systems
• TransTechnology DVX-700 media streamer chooses Google Video over YouTube

How to be a social media rockstar

In order to become a social media rockstar, you’ll need to get the scoops before your competitors, get the interviews they don’t get, and ensure you upload before they have even have a chance to switch their laptops on. It’s all about being first with the news and being in the bests locations to get it.

Social media rockstars like Robert Scoble travel the world finding stories, interviewing people and breaking the news before anyone else. Their videos and podcasts are professional quality and their gear never lets them down.

Just how do they do it? Easy - they buy the best gear! But that doesn’t mean it costs a fortune! The list below features the gadgets used by the pros that won’t set you back a small mortgage, as well as a few tips on making sure your gear’s as good to go as it possibly can be - and certainly better than the competition’s!

1). Break the news first with a Sony DSC-G3 Wi-Fi camera

Nothing says “social media rockstar” like a gallery of pictures taken from exotic locations, or the latest sexiest toys (gadgets, cars, supermodels - whatever is your bag), or just of you hanging out with the celebs in your field.

To get those pics, you need a camera capable of taking great shots super-quick in all lighting conditions, and then lest you upload them to your favourite photo sharing site at the touch of a button.

There are many cameras you could use, but for 2009, look no further than the Sony Cyber-Shot DSC-G3. Announced at CES 2009 back in January, Sony’s cracking Cyber-Shot isn’t even on sale yet, but already it’s got the tech blogosphere drooling for its release.

The reason? Built in Wi-Fi and one touch upload to dozens of different photo sharing sites. You simply take your pics using its 10.1 megapixel camera with 4x optical zoom Carl Zeiss lens, connect to the Internet by pressing the WLAN button, select the Web site you want to upload your pics to, and press send. Instantly, your pics are transferred ready for your hungry audience to lap them up, and all while your competing social mediaites are still busy trying to connect their camera to their PC.

2). Podcast to perfection with the Roland Edirol Audio Recorder

Video isn’t the only medium in which you can shine as a social media rockstar. Ever heard of Podcasts? Of course you have! If you’re going to do professional podcasts, though, you need the proper equipment - in other words, a decent audio recorder.

Although many devices, such as MP3 players, cameras, camcorders and even mobile phones will let you record audio, if you’re going to do this properly, you need a device dedicated to capturing the audio of your subject.

Step forward the Roland EDIROL R-09HR PORTABLE AUDIO RECORDER 4GB
Roland Edirol R-09HR Portable High Resolution Audio Recorder.

It comes with a 4GB memory card, has a USB connection for uploading your audio to your PC, and has a large OLED screen. Best of all, it captures audio in superb quality, at up to 24bit/96KHz fidelity. If you’re living blogging an event or conference, you’re going to need the little Roland, as it’ll capture the speakers voice without muffling, and it’ll give you a valuable source to refer back to when making notes on the event that you’re covering.

WebWorkerDaily columnist Aliza Sherman wouldn’t be without her Roland Edirol when live blogging, and neither should you.

3). Pick the right Laptop

You obviously need a laptop for social media rockstardom, but think about what you’re actually going to be using it for. If you plan on getting your face out there through Live Blogging or Citizen journalism, you’ll need a small lightweight laptop. Sure the latest widescreen laptops look gorgeous, but when you have a 70kg monster sat on your lap at a conference, you soon start to see the downsides of all that screen real estate!

Believe it or not, you can get by quite easily on a 12″ screen, so consider some of the lighter laptops or even netbooks that are available with this screen size. The corresponding reduction in weight and ease of carrying it around will more than make up for its lack of features.

Just make sure your laptop of choice is compatible with, and capable of powering, any software you might need (camcorder drivers, video editing software, etc.)

4). Consider your Connectivity - then consider it again

Often neglected, but absolutely vital. You might think all you need for getting your content out there is a Wi-Fi connection, and so the nearest StarBucks will do. But what if you’re at an event where the Wi-Fi goes down? With so many people all trying to connect simultaneously, this happens at far more conferences than you’d think. Last year’s Le Web 2.0 is perhaps the most prominent conference where this happened, but it also happened to me when I was tweeting from FOWA 2008.

To make sure you have full connectivity, use a USB 3G card. These are fantastic value, and ensure your laptop is always connected to the Internet over the mobile phone network, regardless of what the local Wi-Fi network is doing.

Just for added backup, get two different 3G sticks from two different operators. As Phandroid blogger Rob Jackson discovered, if everyone’s using the same mobile network, that too will have connectivity problems. If connectivity is an absolute must, then get yourself multiple ways of connecting.

5). Power!

Sounds obvious, but no gadget is going to work without power. Fully charged batteries, spare batteries, travel adaptors, battery chargers - buy them by the bucket load! The very last thing you want is one of your devices cutting out on you just as you’re about to get that juicy quote from your interviewee.

Summary

The social media world can be pretty cut-throat. You won’t be the only hack out there trying to make a name for yourself, so you need to make sure you have the right equipment.

By now, you should know:

• What YouTube camera to buy
• The video sites that are better than YouTube
• How to succeed with online video
• The gadgets you need to become Internet famous

So what are you waiting for? Go out there and make a name for yourself!

This is a post from the gadget blog, MediaMentalism.com. For 100s of articles and How To's on HDTVs, Blu-Ray players, media streamers, MP3 and PMP players, come check us out

5 gadgets no social media celeb should be without

• Beyond Twitter: How to use GeoBlogging to catch the next social media wave
• Social Media mentalism - the gadgets you need to rock the social media world
• 15 video sites better than YouTube
• The best YouTube cameras to make you a YouTube Superstar
• Samsung brings Bluetooth to its HDTVs

That would be fine if they worked OK, but once you start travelling across the country, you soon find yourself having to retune them as you stray into an area where the local radio station is broadcasting its warblings over the frequency you’ve selected for your MP3 player or mobile phone.

Fortunately, help is at hand with the new Sony Ericsson AB900 wireless car speaker phone.

The AB900 is, as you’d expect, yet another FM transmitter that lets you plug your mobile into and broadcast your music wirelessly on an FM frequency, where it’s picked up by your car stereo.

Where the AB900 differs from ordinary wireless transmitters, though, is that it uses RDS to automatically locate a spare frequency, and then locks onto it so the transmitter doesn’t drift as you drive around. Even better, should you stray into an area with a competing transmission on the same frequency you’re using, the AB900 will automatically retune itself.

The result - uninterrupted music broadcast from your mobile phone or MP3 player to your car stereo.

Mobile phone features

It doesn’t end there, though. Because the AB900 was designed for mobile phones, it also integrates tightly with your phone’s features. It’ll pair with your phone via Bluetooth, and let you take calls completely hands-free. Better still, it’s battery operated (it offers 26 hours of talk time between recharges) and clips to your sun-visor, so you can take it from car to car - no messy installation problems.

The Sony Ericsson AB900 - the perfect audio streamer?

In many ways, the Sony Ericsson AB900 is the perfect wireless audio streamer. There’s no annoying wires between your phone or Bluetooth MP3 player and your stereo; no power cords needed to your cigarette lighter; no more fighting the frequency selector of your car radio; and great portability and hands-free functionality to boot.

Makes you wonder why no-one else came out with a wireless audio streamer like this years ago!

[Source: Sony Ericsson]

This is a post from the gadget blog, MediaMentalism.com. For 100s of articles and How To's on HDTVs, Blu-Ray players, media streamers, MP3 and PMP players, come check us out

Sony Ericsson AB900 perfects wireless car audio streaming

• Motorola T605: a wireless media streamer for your car
• Secret Sony Ericsson wireless audio system leaked
• Mental Media: the Ten best Audio Gadgets you never knew they made
• Sony to release touchscreen Walkman at CES 2009
• Sony TDM-NC1 Wi-Fi music streaming brick

This is awful news. I know the world-wide recession is hitting companies hard, but for Pioneer to pull out of the Plasma TV business, things must be bad.

Pioneer had been losing money with its Plasma TVs for some years, and so decided to outsource the business to Panasonic. However, Panasonic have themselves been having trouble lately, and so announced a six-month delaying the opening of a new plasma TV factory. This in turn reduced Panasonic’s plasma output, meaning it only had the capacity to produce Plasmas for itself or Pioneer - not both.

Obviously, Pioneer’s plasmas would be the ones to lose out, and so the company was left with the choice of pulling out now, or stopping production until Panasonic’s new factory opened up in 2010. The latter option was a non-starter,though, and so Pioneer have bit the bullet, and pulled out of the plasma TV business altogether.

It should be noted that Pioneer themselves have yet to confirm this, and have said only that:

“As a matter of policy, we cannot comment on rumors or speculation. As you know, we have publicly announced that we are actively evaluating our business. We started announcing changes in March, 2008 to increase efficiencies of our business operations. We are still in that process but do not have any further announcements at this time.”

All indications point to the ending of the plasma business, though, which is sad news indeed, as Pioneer make superb TVs.

The news also took the salesmen at John Lewis by surprise. My friend’s looking for a plasma TV, and a salesman overheard me telling him about Pioneer’s decision to pull out of the plasma TV business. “They can’t pull out,” he spluttered. “They signed a contract with Panasonic.”

Well, they might have, but faced with a six month gap where you can sell no TVs at all as there’s no factory to build them, what do you do?! He remained unconvinced. I should have told him to read tech blogs more if he wanted to stay more up to date, but he seemed even more upset about the news than I was, so I just left, feeling very unsettled about the state of the entire consumer electronics sector!

With Sony, NEC, Hitachi and dozens of other blue-chip consumer electronics companies shedding jobs in their tens of thousands, plus electronics distributors such as Empire Direct going to the wall, this is going to be a rough year for gadget manufacturers.

[Source: HDGuru, via Gizmodo]

This is a post from the gadget blog, MediaMentalism.com. For 100s of articles and How To's on HDTVs, Blu-Ray players, media streamers, MP3 and PMP players, come check us out

Pioneer pulls out of the Plasma TV market

• Pioneer Pro-111FD vs Panasonic TH-50PZ850U who will win?
• Panansonic D-Dock Bluetooth Hi-Fis
• Sony drops OLED in favour of FED TVs?
• The Pioneer BDP-94HD - a cheaper Pioneer Blu-Ray player
• Panasonic TX32LZD80 price drop reflects shift in HDTV market

So the combination of Stephen Fry opining about Apple, Barack Obama, the Internet in general, and social media, in a forum that was live blogged around the Web, was surely a turning point in any geek’s life! It was certainly a milestone in the seemingly unstoppable steamroller that is twitter, which seems to have found the most unlikely champion in Stephen Fry.

Perhaps the most ironic part of Stephen’s talk, though, was after the event itself - when he got stuck in a lift leaving the building, and entertained his fellow liftees by twittering his exploits. He even posted a picture of them all via twitpic!

If ever there was an Oscar Wilde for the social media generation, it’s Stephen Fry. You can follow him on Twitter as @stephenfry, read his live-blogged Apple talk at ElectronicPig, and see his lift exploits over at TwitPic.

This is a post from the gadget blog, MediaMentalism.com. For 100s of articles and How To's on HDTVs, Blu-Ray players, media streamers, MP3 and PMP players, come check us out

Stephen Fry, the Oscar Wilde of Generation Twitter

• Social Media mentalism - the gadgets you need to rock the social media world
• Google CEO bashes Twitter
• New iPods galore, but no new Apple TV
• 15 video sites better than YouTube
• Beyond Twitter: How to use GeoBlogging to catch the next social media wave

So what have they come up with? A girl in her underwear!

Yes, the latest ad for Sony’s high end HDTV features former Wonder-Bra girl Katie Green dressed only in her pants and suspenders. The campaign is allegedly designed to promote the thinness of the ZX1, but do you really need suspenders to do this?!

I’m not complaining of course. Katie Green looks gorgeous, and Sony will get a tonne of exposure with this campaign. It’s all a far cry from their award winning Bravia ads of a few years ago, though, with the thousands of coloured balls pouring down the streets of San Francisco.

Desperate times call for desperate measures, I guess. Still, that said, I’d much rather look at Katie Green than some bouncing balls! I just can’t help thinking that at some point, I should actually be looking at the TV being advertised!

[Source: Pocket Lint]

This is a post from the gadget blog, MediaMentalism.com. For 100s of articles and How To's on HDTVs, Blu-Ray players, media streamers, MP3 and PMP players, come check us out

Sony sells HDTVs with suspenders

• Sony TDM-NC1 Wi-Fi music streaming brick
• Overpriced Sony Bravia streamers ignore the credit crunch
• The all singing, all dancing Sony BRAVIA W4000
• I’ve found the holy grail of all HDTVs
• Bathe in the glow of your waterproof Sony Bravia TV

If only it were that easy! Fortunately, I’ve created a guide on how to succeed with online video, which shows you how to use your video camera, the dozens of video upload sites and your own imagination to make real money with online video.

How to succeed as a Video blogger

There are two ways of making money from a video blog: either make yourself the focus of your videos, or create a blog that includes your own videos and those from other people.

Video blogging using your own and other people’s videos

If it’s Internet celebrity status you’re after, such as Robert Scoble, then you’ll need to include yourself in the videos you shoot, even if it’s only behind the camera. A much easier, way, though, is to mix video that you shoot yourself with videos from other producers.

The guys at YouGottaSeeThisVideo.com (left) did this to perfection, and were nominated for best video blog 2007 at the prestigious Weblog awards.

This is an easier way to have success with a video blog, as creating video can be quite time consuming, so combining your own video with videos that other people have created ensures you get more high quality content than you would if you were shooting all the vids yourself. Just make sure the other videos are related to the topic you focus on, and ensure that your video blog has a consistent theme throughout.

For tips on creating a video blog and monetizing it using your own videos and those from other people, check out the following:

• Using YouTube to become a leader in your blog niche - blogging and social media genius Maki (one of Digg’s top superusers) shares his thoughts on becoming a successful blogger by using a successful Youtube user as a case study.
• Make money with a video blog - superb article on how to make money with a video blog. Step by step advice on setting up your blog, choosing content, and even where to position your ads for maximum click-through.
• DigitalPoint forum on making money with a video blog - forum thread that expands on the above article, including more detailed advice for the budding video blogger.
• More top advice from Maki on making money for a video blog - does exactly what it says on the tin. Maki’s posts are so consistently good, you wonder how he has time to sleep!

Video blogging all by yourself

If you want to be YouTube famous, you’ll need to ensure you’re always in the video somewhere, even if it’s only as a voice over behind the camera. This will only work if you have a loud and engaging personality - no-one wants to see videos of dull people.

Look at Perez Hilton (left), for example. His whole site isn’t just about celebrity gossip, it’s about him and his personality.

If you want to be Internet famous, you need to be able to capture’ people’s attention in a similar way (well, maybe not in quite such a similar way! - there’s only room in this world for one Perez Hilton, surely!)

One way to test this out is to start live blogging yourself on Justin.tv. Here you can experiment with a small audience to begin with, and build it up over time, before branching out with your own video-based Web site around you.

If you don’t have a loud personality, or you don’t want to be Internet famous but like shooting video, then consider live blogging important people or events.

The best example of this type of video blogger is Robert Scoble, who scours the world to get the latest scoops on tech-related subjects, and interviews the people in the industry who matter.

You can live blog trade shows, conferences, launch parties - pretty much anything that people want to see. You can do it to generate traffic to your own blog, or to promote someone else’s for money. Effectively, you become a freelance blogger for someone who pays you to cover important events.

If you think this is for you, check out some of these sites on how to become a live blogger:

• Live blogging best practices (note: the page looks like it was designed in 1994, but don’t let that put you off - it was actually written in 2007!)
• How to do conference blogging - excellent set of tips on how to live blog conferences for your own professional development
• Conference blogging for professional bloggers - from Blog Herald, one of the top Problogging sites on the Web
• How to blog a conference - hardware, software and strategy for live blogging like a pro.
• How to Live Blog a conference - conference blogging tips from the experts
• Beth Kanter - prolific blogger for Blog Her, Beth has covered many live events and givdes some top tips for Live Blogging wannabes
• Live blogging the Web 2.0 way - great set of Web 2.0 sites to help you live blog an event
• Live Blogging the WebWorkerDaily way - loads of live blogging posts from one of the top blogs on the Web
• How to use CoverItLive for Live blogging - review of the live blogging site CoverItLive.com
• ProBlogger’s live blogging tips - tips from the expert himself.
• Free 6 page e-book on live blogging - extremely useful guide to live blogging,plus great links to opther experts
• Confessions of a live blog failure - some of the pitfalls to watch out for when live blogging
• The art of live blogging - does exactly what it says on the tin
• TopRank tips on Live blogging - includes strategies,software and top tips

How to succeed with viral videos

If you’re the creative type and love creating your own videos, then you need to make your video go viral if you want success.

A viral video is one that people like so much, they share it with their friends, who in turn share it with their friends, and so on.

The video literally spreads like an epidemic, gaining you maximum exposure.

Be warned, this is not an easy process, but the rewards can be huge.

Finding the killer hook you need to get your video to go viral is the secret to viral success.

It’s a black art, though, and will require much trial and error, but here are some excellent articles with tips and advice that’ll give you a head start:

• Viral marketing with Lisa Nova’s sexy videos - sex sells, and Lisa Nova (in the video, above) knows it, exploiting this age old marketing trick to perfection. She’s created a series of sexy characters that you can use in your own video clips completely free. Called Lisa Nova collab characters, they can help spice up your clips, while promoting Lisa herself - clever! Emulating Lisa’s strategy is one option, but using Lisa’s video clips yourself in your own clips may be a better option if you have the sex appeal of a moose’s arse.
• The secret strategies behind many viral videos - TechCrunch article into viral video promotion from the head of viral video marketing company The Comotion Group. See also this follow-up article, which clears up a few misundertandings from the original post.
• How to succeeed at YouTube - revealing interview with Andrew Nesbitt, who’s had several videos go viral.
• Forrester research’s interview with WillItBlend.com. Video Website WillItBlend.com has had enormous success with YouTube. Forrester research interview the guys behind the site and come up with some top tips for viral videos.

If you’re still looking for inspiration, check out the deeply ironic vid below on how to make viral video clips!

Custom video creation

If you love creating video and want to be paid for your efforts, consider becoming a freelance video producer. Companies will pay you to create videos to advertise their products or services. You need to be skilled in creating videos to do this, but if you’ve got the talent, head to MediaMobz and sign up as a producer. You can then bid for work producing videos for companies looking for creative individuals to produce advertisements for them.

Note that their homepage implies they only sign up advertisers. This isn’t the case at all - when you start the sign-up process you can select whether you’re offering your services as a producer, or whether you’re a buyer. Check their FAQ for more details.

Summary

Blimey, these posts are getting out of hand! If you’re into making videos for the Web, these links should help you focus on your videos’ theme, monetize them, become a YouTube superstar, and ultimately succeed with online video. If you know of any other great articles for online video success, or just want to share your own tips and advice,feel free to comment below.

Meanwhile, check out my other posts on the best gadgets for online video, and video sites that are even better than YouTube.

This is a post from the gadget blog, MediaMentalism.com. For 100s of articles and How To's on HDTVs, Blu-Ray players, media streamers, MP3 and PMP players, come check us out

How to make money with online video

• Social Media mentalism - the gadgets you need to rock the social media world
• 15 video sites better than YouTube
• 5 gadgets no social media celeb should be without
• The best YouTube cameras to make you a YouTube Superstar
• Beyond Twitter: How to use GeoBlogging to catch the next social media wave

And don’t just think YouTube is the only place to upload your video. It might be the obvious place to upload your vids, but there are many video sites that are even better than YouTube.

Web video sites that are better than YouTube

• Vimeo - Like YouTube, but offers higher definition, and has the concept of Projects, in which people work together to work on a video project about
• MetaCafe - YouTube clone
• Blip.tv - Can format your video for a wide array of different players, from iTunes to YouTube, even to mobile phones.
• Veoh - Video aggregator site that lets you upload videos, watch videos from Veoh and YouTube, and even watch TV and videos from the major studios (including Lost).
• Viddler - Another simple YouTube clone
• Revver - Can email videos to your friends and fans, submit video to iTunes, or even create your own .tv site. Also has a powerful API for creating your own video-based applications. Best of all, though, you can install a WordPress plugin that lets you publish, track and manage your video all from your WordPress blog. Revver host the videos, so you don’t need to worry about bandwidth, the video is fully embeddable in any other web site or blog, and all links point back to your site (unlike YouTube, which points back to itself). Revver even allows your audience to submit comments via video.
• Flickr - Yahoo!’s famous image site now supports video as well. The potential audience is huge, but each video is limited to 90 seconds (think of it as Twitter for video)

And you thought the only video site on the Web was YouTube!

Actually, there’s too much choice. Video files are huge, and uploading to one service takes an age, let alone to all 7 (and I still haven’t included sites such as MySpace, Facebook, Ovi, Crackle - you get the idea!)

If you’re a blogger, Revver currently makes the most sense, as it’s so much easier to incorporate into your blog (at least if you’re using WordPress).

However, if you really want to be social media rockstar, you need to be on all of these sites. Luckily there’s one simple way that you can do this without having to upload your video umpteen different times. TubeMogul is a new site that will automatically publish your video on most of the sites I’ve just listed, and give you all the tracking information you need so you can see how many of your fans are watching you. You need only upload your video once to TubeMogul - TubeMogul itself will then publish your video on the other sites for you, saving you time and bandwidth.

Once you’ve uploaded your video to these sites, you can then focus on establishing your personal brand by managing your channels, monitoring how often your videos are viewed, and tracking where over the web your videos are being embedded.

Real time video publishing

The sites listed above all let you publish video that you’ve already recorded. What if you’re at some major event, though, and want to publish video in realtime as it happens? Luckily, the Web’s got the answer for you (as always!)

• Kyte.tv - takes YouTube to the next level. The site looks fantastic, you can create your won Kyte channel (perfect for wannabe rockstars with a dedicated audience), and, best of all, it supports live streaming from your camcorder or mobile phone. If you’re at the scene of something interesting, Kyte.tv will ensure your pictures are relayed in real time to a welcoming world.
• UStream.tv - similar to Kyte, put lets your audience chat over your video as well.
• Qik - designed more for live streaming from a mobile phone, but useful if you don’t have your camcorder with you.

Now I know where to publish - but what videos do I actually shoot?

So now you know what YouTube camera to buy for social media superstardom, and where to publish your works of art. Only thing your need to do know is to work out what to film!

Fortunately for you, you don’t have to wait long - I’ll be posting another article this week that looks at the different types of video to shoot to become a social media rockstar - and even make money from it!

This is a post from the gadget blog, MediaMentalism.com. For 100s of articles and How To's on HDTVs, Blu-Ray players, media streamers, MP3 and PMP players, come check us out

15 video sites better than YouTube

• Social Media mentalism - the gadgets you need to rock the social media world
• Beyond Twitter: How to use GeoBlogging to catch the next social media wave
• The best YouTube cameras to make you a YouTube Superstar
• How to make money with online video
• 5 gadgets no social media celeb should be without