Looks like our favorite video sharing site is in the midst of a massive makeover and from the looks of it, things are looking good. While YourTube’s latest update brought a more minimal approach to the site, it’s still horribly convoluted and while the sharing aspect of it works well, the commenting system is a nightmare (racism,trolling,stupidity,etc). Vimeo, from our first look, seems to have adopted an ultra clean, very modern look (very Apple), with simplicity being the driving force behind the update.
Brand New Browsing Page: Vimeo has moved into a more cinematic look for it’s main browser page, adding a wider (full width) media player, universally known icons for controls and keyboard shortcuts.
Better Browsing: The new video browser will remain completely hidden and out of the way until the viewer wants to access it:
….To access it, click the “More Videos” flag in the upper right corner of any video page, or use the keyboard shortcut “M.” The video browser also provides more ways to discover things you like. Jump to your feed (see below), recently watched videos, watch later list, and more, all from one convenient spot…
Additional changes come to Vimeo’s Upload and Search features, which have needed an overhaul for some time.
Better Uploading: Uploading multiple files has become drop dead simple and Vimeo has added dynamic file detection to eliminate those pesky media format issue – also live thumbnail preview is available.
Advanced Search: Search is a driving force on the web, just ask Google, so Vimeo has added advanced search options:
…We’ve seen a huge increase in people using search to find interesting stuff on Vimeo, so we’ve added ways to get better results. Just click Show Advanced Filters on any search results page, and whether you’re hot on the trail of videos, people, Channels, or something in the forums, we can help you find what you’re looking for….
Vimeo is the midst of a massive update and not only is it a long time coming but it looks like they have some amazing designers working in house. Navigation, services, content and interaction often times isn’t as native as it should be on the web - it’s good to see a company step up and make it’s already breakthrough services even better. Check out all the updates for yourself….
Source: Vimeo
Search: We’ve all seen the commercials (Below). We’ve all seen people talking to their iPhones – asking info and directions. Siri, Apple’s built in personal assistant is all the craze but has Apple, purposefully or not, put into motion the demise of Google’s search empire – or for that matter, search as we know it today? See, it all starts with how we think and use search right now – how Google, Bing and the lot have us searching now. You go to Google, you enter your query and then you’re presented with pages upon pages of results. These results are based on Google’s algorithm and advertising model, so what Google wants you to do is spend as much time as possible looking through their results. Essentially, this is the framework to Google’s search empire and their cash cow, which is printing them billions of dollars every year.
Enter Siri! When you ask your iPhone a question, it isn’t using Google search to find and provide you with the answer. It’s taking advantage of Apple’s partners, like Yelp and WolframAlpha to gather the correct information, before sending it to Siri. In essence, it’s bipassing Google all together and as Apple adds and acquires the necessary partners, its dependence on Google for search will lessen. Thanks to Siri’s success, other OEM’s are rushing to buy speech to text and voice recognition companies, Amazon being the most recent. Now, this doesn’t mean people won’t search in the classical way (as we do now) but as search evolves into voice and touch, companies will be able to move beyond Google, to provide their customers with the information they desire.
Google: This isn’t news to Google and you can bet that they’re evolving along with the trend of search - after all, they are acquiring (on average) a company a week! That’s right, Google is adding to their portfolio, a company a week. This means technologies and services that will help them advance their search offerings far beyond the current traditional sense – for Google, the future is a combination or Local+Social+Search.
Future: The process of searching for information, is going through a renaissance at the moment and while we don’t know how far along it will advance (voice, touch, vision), we do know that its current form will go through some hard growing pains. Traditional search companies like Google and Microsoft will have to up their game, in order to stay in the game. For me, the most exciting aspect of this ever evolving tech, is the way we will interact with our countless digital devices.
Image Source: Cloudfiles.com
Not a good week so far for Microsoft, as it has issued a reason for the mysterious Win Phone 7 data lose issue and has been accused of piggybacking Google’s search results.
WP7: As it turns out, Yahoo is to blame for the massive amount of unaccounted for data usage people had showing up on their monthly wireless phone bills. The issue specifically: “Rafael Rivera demonstrated that Yahoo was sending 25 times more data than other IMAP mail providers whenever the phone interrogates the mail server; though the amount of data transferred each time is not enormous, the effect over the span of a month can be many gigabytes of data.”
Caught Cheating: Husband’s away on a business trip and the gardner comes over to thin out your bed? No, nothing so provocative here, just a classic cause of, “if you can’t beat them, cheat of them!” Google has accused (with evidence) Microsoft of essentially piggybacking of searches: “To test this hypothesis, Google manually set up fake results pages for very random queries, sent 20 engineers home to search on those terms using a computer with the IE8 toolbar, and weeks later those same fake results for those random results showed up on Bing.”
Oh Microsoft – this midlife crisis will not last forever, so sell the sports car and get ride of the gardner. Stay true or exit stage right. NEXT!!
Source: Arstechnica