Thanks to Brian Edmondson, who makes all the videos for Overcome Everything’s ListBuilding Club, I found a new flash player for my EasyBlogTricks.com blog. I need to do an overhaul there because of the changes to WordPress 2.7, but haven’t had the time. Still, this new player will really make things easier for me. I’ve had lots of trouble keeping the videos (especially the video on the front door) working.
I think I have a solution!
The site is LongTail Video at: http://www.longtailvideo.com/
There are complete installation instructions, and you can download the player free, as long as you’re not using it for commercial gain. Since EasyBlogTricks.com is just an information site, I can use it with the non-commercial license. But if it works as well as I think it will, I’ll definitely buy a commercial license for only 39 Euros, which translates to about $50. You may think that’s a lot for a video player, but this one is very customizable. It rocks!
There are plugins for things like:
- Running rolling ads in the player. Stick one into your blog’s sidebar.
- WordTube converts your site to a “YouTube” type environment in a WordPress blog. Neat.
- Viral allows you to have a share function and will allow viewers to see other videos you have created
There are different skins you can choose from, as well, from simple to insane.
The add-ons are quite interesting, too. Here’s one made just for my specific purpose:
“The Simple Flash Video Plugin builds on the plugins that already allow easy posting of .flv or .mp4 files on the popular Wordpress platform. It also enables advanced stats tracking of your viewership via Simple Stats.”
Sweet! Tracking stats and a cool player, too!
If you’re into video, and you should be, this is a site you should definitely check out. I’m learning more about video and all the cool things you can do with it every day, and it’s becoming the medium of choice online. Think of these things:
- People are used to watching TV. It’s only natural that since the speed of our connections continues to improve that video will become more and more popular with the Internet audience. Just look at YouTube and how fast it’s grown over the past 3 years.
- Creating video is often easier than writing. Many people hate to write, and video is a perfect solution. Video products will become the norm, rather than the exception.
- Video is fun to create and to edit. Making short films and editing them to show to an audience is getter easier and more fun to do all the time.
So, it’s time you jumped into video. If you’re already there, trust me… you need to check out LongTail and their very cool product.



