One of my students asked me yesterday what I thought of viddix.com. Since I never heard of it, I had a look at it and guess what? I was perplexed at what I saw there. This is a new revolution in video channels. No, let me rephrase this : This is THE REVOLUTION in video channels. Nothing is going to be the same anymore thanks to a small Dutch company which had the great idea of creating a video channel with a “little extra”.
On viddix.com, you do not only upload you video with some text information, you also can add a wide variety of documents that appear next to your video EXACTLY WHEN YOU WANT IT to appear. This is so brilliant that I actually have no words for it because the possibilities are endless.
To view this sample: http://www.viddix.com/watch.php?v=47bb39d19488f
After you uploaded your video, you can set cuepoints for it by scrolling to the position in your video where you want something to appear next to the video in another box. This can be anything, from a download link to a pdf, doc, excell, powerpoint… to Flash, images and even another video. So, viewers can simultaneously download and/or read lines of text while the video progresses. Imagine what that means for video tutorials, for instance. A person can speak, and on the right you get some extra info or a repetition with text and/or images.
I’m not going to talk too much about this, I suggest you have a look at www.viddix.com and see for yourself why I am so enthusiastic about it. Some videos are in Dutch, but even in a strange language, it is easy to follow what is going on and why this channel is going to grow like hell in the near future. In fact, if they are not gobbled up by some large American company, they have a fair chance of growing very big, very fast.
I’m quite confident that you will see the potential of this little channel and that is why is gets a rating of 5/5 from me. 🙂
What a great tool you’ve found there John.
I like the fact that you are on the look out for new tools like this one.
Thanks a lot for this type of detailed analysis.
Miss Gisele B.
This looks really great I will check it out!
Heather Picken
Wonderful idea. can we embed the code for this in our own site, you think?
You can embed any VIDDIX video in your own website by using the code under the ‘video info’ tab..
Great to hear you love the concept, we’re working hard on improving and expanding. Thanks!
That is good news, Sébastien. We will make use of the viddix feature and write a follow-up article on your service.
Please folks, pass this article on, this is groundbreaking news! And if you are not convinced yet, wait until my next article on this topic is ready.
John+++
I watched the sample video you linked to and… it was just a video; the iPanel on the right was totally blank, nothing happening there.
Then, with a sneaking suspicion, I tried it in a different browser, and it worked; I saw ingredients, directions etc. Pretty cool.
But I wonder how many users could end up having the same experience I did the first time: nothing in the iPanel, no indication/warning that there should be, no message about Viddix not supporting certain browsers.
Lack of cross-browser support is uncool in itself, but lack of any /indication/feedback/info to user about it is worse.
(Technical info: I first tried in Opera 9.52, then in Firefox 3.03, both on Ubuntu 8.04. And before anyone suggests it: no, I will not just use FF fulltime: I have lost patience with the number of times it freezes, crashes or completely slows down my entire computer.)
Hi galesl,
Thanks for this information. I have forwarded your comment to the technical team of Viddix itself, because you are right, this is a problem.
Hi Galesl, thank you for pointing out this problem with Ubuntu/Opera.
We completely agree with you on the point you make about the lack of feedback to the user, we will work on that.
The compatibility issue seems to be related with Ubuntu, so we’ll get into Ubuntu a bit more to try and resolve the issue.
99.9% of users have no problem viewing iPanel content on VIDDIX, and we try hard to get the remaining 0.1% onboard.
I hope this answers your question. If you have any more feedback and/or questions please let us know directly by using our feedback form. Thanks!
Hi Sébastien and John,
Thanks for the replies.
I’ve heard full cross-browser compatibility is a lot of heavy work and it’s great that it works fine for 99.9%.
BTW I’ve started using Swiftweasel (an optimized version of Firefox) and I’m a lot happier. With extensions, it might just be enough to tempt me away from Opera.