WebProNews

Tag: Videos

  • Vine Makes Videos Embeddable via Web and Mobile

    Today, Vine has finally made their six-second videos embeddable across the web. They’ve also updated their iOS app to allow for embedding (as well as the ability to share other people’s Vines on Facebook and Twitter).

    “When we launched Vine, we described posts as ‘little windows into the people, settings, ideas and objects that make up your life.’ With today’s update, you can display them almost anywhere,” says Vine.

    When you reach the embed screen, you can choose your size as well as two modes – simple mode and postcard mode.

    Simple embeds simply show the Vine, with the pertinent information like user, description, hashtags, etc. shown when you hover.

    Postcard mode shows all of that info in a white frame around the Vine video:

    In order to embed a Vine via the iOS app, tap on the “…” button within any Vine video. Click “share this post” and then finally “embed.” you’ll get an email with the code, which will take you to the embed page. Make your size and mode selections and there you go. Copy the code and put it up on your site. It’s not exactly without its annoyances, but it’s about as easy as embedding on through an app could be.

    You can embed your own Vines, or anyone else’s Vine as long as they’ve already shared it on Facebook or Twitter.

  • Khan Academy’s Advice For Scaling Your Startup To Millions Of Users

    Google interviewed Ben Kamens, lead developer at Khan Academy, about scaling a startup to millions of users, which the popular online learning site has been able to do. Google uploaded the video to its Developer YouTube channel this week.

  • Google+ Engineers Tell You How To Get People To Your App

    Google developer programs engineers Silvano Luciani and Joanna Smith put out a video this week, discussing how to use interactive posts to “bring the people who care” to your apps. The two explore how to find the best audience when prefilling recipients, and build a widget to demonstrate how to help users pick the right people for interactive posts.

  • Nick Offerman Break Dances, Dons Chicken Suit for a Lumineers Cover

    As you may know, Nick Offerman is a man of many talents. It just so happens that one of those talents is breaking it down.

    On last night’s Late Night with Jimmy Fallon, Offerman discussed his reddit AMAs, walking the beans, and his childhood rap career.

    Oh yeah, and then he busted out some sweet moves.

    Then, he joined Fallon and Blake Shelton for an all-clicking version of the Lumineer’s hit song “Ho Hey.”

  • This Is the Most Honest Cable Ad That You’ll Never See [VIDEO]

    You’ve seen this ad before. A harmless-looking guy asks you if you want fast, reliable internet and a choice of all the best HD cable channels – all at a reasonable price. Well, sure, golly, gosh – of course I do!

    The only difference with this ad is that it’s honest. It’s an ad for “Your Local High Speed Internet & Cable Provider,” and they tell it like it is. They’re going to suck you dry and provide passable service as best, and you’re going to like it.

    [ExtremelyDecentFilms]

  • Now Even Beer Ads Are Making Fun of Apple Fanboys

    Well, cider ads to be more precise.

    Less apps, more apples. That’s the tagline for Somersby Cider, the new cider brand from Carlsberg, who just released the beverage’s first U.K. advert. In it, fans eagerly await the opening of a minimalistic store so they can be the first to experience the new product.

    Sound like anything familiar? Cider. Apples. Apple. There you go.

    Part homage and part ridicule, the new ad for Somersby Cider looks and sounds like a cross between an actual Apple ad and those Samsung ads that lampooned Apple fanboys. Anyway, check it out below:

    [Somersby Cider UK via Mashable]

  • Bill Gates’ Condom Contest Gets the NMA Treatment

    As previously reported, the Bill & Melinda Gates foundation is looking for new innovations in the new round of their “Grand Challenges Explorations” initiative. One of these contests is for a $100,000 grant to develop a better condom, you know, to increase usage around to world to help protect against unwanted pregnancies and diseases.

    The condom hasn’t really received an upgrade in nearly 50 years, argues the foundation. And why not?

    The story is big enough that our favorite Taiwanese animators, NMA, decided to give it their treatment. As expected, it’s pretty off-the-wall. Check out the video below for hilariously misguided attempts to use condoms, Sims-like lovemaking, and a not-so-subtle hint that Apple is also looking to score in this department.

  • Kid Can’t Pronounce Dump Truck, Hilarity Ensues

    Sometimes, kids have trouble saying certain words. And sometimes, it’s hilarious. In my opinion, this kid knew exactly what he was doing by the end of the video. Well played, kid, well played.

    You know where this is going…

    [aaronreynolds via reddit]

  • Google’s Cutts Talks About Blocking JavaScript

    For the second day in a row, Matt Cutts answers a question from a fellow Googler in a Webmaster Help video. This one comes from Webmaster Trends analyst John Mueller:

    “Googlebot keeps crawling my JavaScript and thinking that text in my scripts refers to URLs. Can I just disallow crawling of my JavaScript files to fix that.”

    Long story short, he wouldn’t advise it. If there’s one individual JavaScript file that’s the source of the problem, you could disallow that, he says.

    Also, don’t block CSS.

    He says, “It turns out, as we’re executing JavaScript, we do look at the attributes, so you can actually use JavaScript, and put like a nofollow attribute on individual URLs, and so it is the sort of thing where you can do link level granularity there. And you can block, for example, and individual JavaScript file, but in general, I would not recommend blocking all of your JavaScript files.”

    Cutts has talked about blocking Google from crawling JavaScript, and how it can hurt your rankings, in the past. Watch that video here.

  • Backstreet Boys Finally Get Around to Making a Harlem Shake Video and Your Tween Heart Will Melt

    You thought the Harlem Shake was a dead meme, didn’t you? Well, nothing is really complete until the Backstreet Boys have a crack at it, right?

    No? That’s not a thing? Either way, I’ll be willing to bet that there’s still a fairly large contingent of you out there whose heart still flutters with the mere mention of BSB. You know who you are. And this is for you:

  • Getting Google Rankings Back After Site Downtime

    Getting Google Rankings Back After Site Downtime

    The latest Google Webmaster Help video deals with getting your site’s rankings back after experiencing some downtime.

    Google’s Matt Cutts will often provides answers to his own questions in these videos. This time the question comes from Googler Pierre Far, a Webmaster Trends analyst at Google UK. The question is:

    My website was down for a couple of days and now has lost all of its Google rankings. What can I do to get them back?

    Basically, Cutts’ answer is just to put the site back up, make sure it’s reliable, and make sure the pages that were there before are still there.

    “There’s a tension at Google where if a page goes away (maybe there’s a 404), we don’t know if it’s really gone away or whether that page will be back,” he says. “Sometimes there’s a server time out, you know, the server is kind of slow. And so, on one hand, you don’t want to keep showing a page that would be a bad user experience, like it’s really gone away. On the other hand, it’s very common for websites to go down for an hour, two hours, a day, two days…and so you also want to give the benefit of the doubt, so you can revisit those pages and see whether they’ve gone up.”

    “So we do have different varying time periods where we basically allow, if a domain looks like it’s gone away, but it comes back – you know, it’s back online, then we just sort of say, ‘Okay, it was a transient error,’ so the short and simple advice is just make sure you put the website back up the way it was, and hopefully things should recover relatively quickly,” says Cutts.

    This may not be quite the answer you were looking for, but that’s the one Google is giving. It would certainly be interesting to know more about these “varying periods of time”.

  • A Funny Look at Getting Verified on Twitter [VIDEO]

    For those of you who love Twitter and wish to have influence on the network, the sad fact is that you’ll probably never be verified. No matter how hard you try, Twitter isn’t likely to contact you directly, expressing their wish to add that little blue check mark next to your name. Sorry man, it’s just not going to happen (for most of you).

    The best you can do is to live vicariously through Anil Dash, who sat down with the Kondabolu brothers to discuss the process, and it’s a pretty entertaining watch.

    [Hari Kondabolu via The Next Web]

  • Nilofer Merchant Talks At Google

    Nilofer Merchant Talks At Google

    Nilofer Merchant, author of the bestselling 11 Rules for Creating Value in the #SocialEra (published by Harvard Business Review Press), recently did an @Google Talk, and the company posted the video today.

    Google explains, “In this talk, Merchant argues that ‘social’ is much more than ‘media.’ Smart companies are letting social become the backbone of their business models, increasing their speed and flexibility by pursuing openness and fluidity. Her thesis doesn’t just apply to companies but also people. Individuals connected together can now create in ways that once only organizations could. Today’s successful leaders don’t operate like the powerful ‘800-pound gorillas’ of yesteryear – but instead act more like a herd of 800 gazelles, moving together across a savannah, outrunning the competition.”

    Enjoy.

  • Watch Google’s Latest Enhanced Campaigns Webinar

    Google has uploaded a new webinar about Enhanced Campaigns to YouTube. Advertisers with a half hour to spare would probably do well to check it out. This one specifically deals with Google Shopping and Enhanced Campaigns.

    Earlier this week, Google announced new ValueTrack parameters for Enhanced Campaigns.

  • Using Vine to Make Lemon Videos Is the Best Way to Use Vine

    Comedian and MADtv alum Will Sasso is doing Vine right. What does it mean to do Vine right? Well, Twitter’s 6-second-video app is so young, that it’s hard to know exactly what it’s for. Is it for porn? Is it for keeping your constituents up to date on your Congressional activities? Maybe, and maybe.

    But one thing that it is definitely for is lemon videos. Yeah, lemon videos. Will Sasso is making a lot of them, and here’s a handy compilation of them all. Make sure to follow Sasso on Twitter for more fun Vine videos. They’re not all about lemons, by damnit if they aren’t brilliant.

    [via reddit]

  • Awesome Karate Knockout Scores One for the Little Guy

    Dude’s got skills. And it’s always nice to see the little guy prevail – especially with a twisting, spinning, flying face-kick. I’m not sure you try this move in a real fight, but this is a Karate match. And there, this is simply badass.

    [boringlytv]

  • KAPOOYA! Woman Describing Hailstorm Is Your Next Big Meme

    There was a pretty significant hailstorm in Brookshire, Texas on Wednesday morning. And when it hit, it sounded like KAPOOYA KAPOOYA!

  • Ah Yes, the Ol’ Imaginary Friend Photo Prank [VIDEO]

    Sometimes, the ability to trick someone has less to do with the trick itself and more to do with the presentation. Here, we see a very simple trick that should have been figured out by at least 90% of the victims. But, as you may have guessed, everyone falls for it. Otherwise, we wouldn’t have a video to show you, right?

    Dude, I’m so ‘ella mad at you.

    [MagicofRahat]

  • YouTube Now Serves a Billion+ Unique Users a Month

    YouTube has just announced a huge milestone, one that shows just how powerful the world of online video really is.

    The Google property and most popular video site on the internet has just hit a billion unique users every month.

    “In the last eight years you’ve come to YouTube to watch, share and fall in love with videos from all over the world. Tens of thousands of partners have created channels that have found and built businesses for passionate, engaged audiences,” says YouTube.

    “From the aspiring filmmaker in his basement and the next great pop musician, to the fans all around the world who tune in, subscribe and share their favorite videos with the planet, thank you for making YouTube what it is today. You have truly created something special.”

    The only other comparable network would be Facebook, which has over a billion monthly active users.

    When you think about a billion uniques in a month, the number itself is simply staggering. In just one month, about 10 Super Bowl-sized audiences watch at least one video on YouTube. If YouTube’s monthly unique audience were a country, it was be the third biggest country in the world (behind China and India).

    Almost half of all people on the internet watches a video on YouTube each month.

    Considering that there are about 6.9 billion people on Earth, 1 billion would represent about 14.5% of the entire world.

    And the mind-blowing comparisons could go on and on. The point is simply this: YouTube is hands down one of the most ubiquitous presences in our lives.

    In other YouTube-related billion view milestones, last December, viral smash “Gangnam Style” became the first video to ever break the 1 billion view milestone.

    [Image via jm3, Flickr]

  • You Won’t Believe These Facts About Mr. Rogers

    Today is the first day of spring. It’s still cold here. Stupid spring.

    It’s also the birthday of television legend Fred McFeely Rogers.

    Mr. Rogers was a wonderful and fascinating human being. And as Mental Floss shows, there are plenty of things that you probably didn’t know about him. Did you know his middle name was McFeely? I sure didn’t.

  • Watch President Obama Fill Out His NCAA Bracket

    President Obama, self-proclaimed avid college basketball fan, has just made his predictions for how March Madness will play out. ESPN calls it “Barack-etology. Cute.

    This year, the President selects Louisville, Ohio St., Florida, and Indiana to advance to the Final Four. In the final game, he has Louisville facing Indiana. In the end, he thinks Indiana will be the champions of college basketball for 2013.

    Last year, the President successfully picked only one of the Final Four teams. Do you think his picks are better this year?