Virb is virby awake!

I guess I may have to eat some of my words tonight. Last night I commented on the problems I had with getting the video on Virb to stream. Well, guess what? I just received an email from Matt at Virb a while back asking if he can help. Now, THAT is impressive! :-)

Well I tried it again tonight and am getting the same effect in both IE 7 and FireFox, then realised I can get some seconds of it. I have sent Matt some screenshots and info, because I suspect it may have something to do with Flash 8.0 because I have tried it even with my firewall disabled. So, it is still not working for me, but I am very sure that I will be able to report soon enough that it is working, if the service so far is anything to go by! Will keep you posted.

So for tonight I went Stumbling again. Found this site with a really a great name - Grumblebum! One of the utilities allows you to convert video, sound or other media files to any other format! There was another one that I reviewed earlier on 11 April - Zamzar, that does the similar thing. Must say that on a quick overview, there does not appear to be any significant variance. So remember it if you find yourself stuck and you want to convert some files.

So, after stumbling for a little while I decided that I still have an unfinished review of the 25 Start-ups to watch from CNN Money. So back I went and the next on the list was BlipTV. Nice design. Their mission? According to them: "Our mission is to make this even easier by taking care of all the problems a budding videoblogger, podcaster or Internet TV producer would run into. We'll take care of the servers, the software, the workflow, the advertising and the distribution. Your focus should be on creativity." The content is split between Episodes and Shows. I decided to have a look at some episodes of the Ministry of Unknown Science video podcasts. Very amusing. Not an unusual site I guess as various others are doing similar things, but I guess that if they support the various different formats they state they do, they will enable more people to use their service for hosting their shows, for people like you and me to watch. CNN commented: "A deal is already signed with Web TV service Akimbo, which lets producers send their videos to TV sets." So, this may be an interesting one to watch.

I am being distracted a bit by my wife looking at Grand Designs on Channel 4. She is fascinated by the houses people build or refurbish.

Anyhow. I decided to Google "Social Networks" and came across a few interesting blogs that discuss Social Networks. One that I enjoyed most, was from Christopher Allan of Life with Alactrity. He has signed up with various networks and gives a great detailed overview of the UI (User Interface) and ease of use of each of them on the link I gave. One of the first he details is Ryze, which I had not yet come across. I clicked through to it, but it seems very similar to LinkedIn that I use, except that LinkedIn is more business networking oriented, and does not use the term 'Friends' which is very popular with social networking sites and tools, such as Twitter and Jaiku.

What is interesting when you read other people's blogs, is that we all have a few favourites, happily browse around with others, but seldom delve deeply into too many. And I suppose that is the reason for so many different sites surviving - each appeals to something within us and when we find the one or two that generally hits the sweet spot of accord within us, we settle down with them and only depart when pushed or prodded by peer pressure or other influences.

I guess if you're reading this, you may still be browsing, or you just enjoy finding something different every now and then! Happy hunting, and, if you do find something interesting, please feel free to share it via a comment.