Sunday, July 20, 2008

myVidster Bookmarks for Firefox (add-on)

myVidster now has a Firefox Add-on for bookmarking videos. This add-on behaves just like the bookmarklet, but is easier to install and use.

Currently the add-on is in the Sandbox and will need a few reviews before it can get approved for public use.

If you would like to beta test and review the add-on all you need to do is:

1. Go to Video Bookmarks Add-Ons page.
2. Sign up for an account (Mozilla requires login for addons that are in the sandbox, sorry)
3. Install!!!

Please post a quick review on the Video Bookmarks Add-Ons page. This will help in the approval process.

Thanks

Sunday, July 13, 2008

New bookmarklet and improvements

I know it has been a while since I posted an update, but here it is.

New bookmarklet
After a couple weeks of trial and error, I final developed a bookmarklet that I am happy with. If you are a FireFox user, I would strongly encourage upgrading your bookmarklet to the new one found in your homepage. The new bookmarklet, is faster and it can grab videos from private pages (ie. mySpace, Facebook).

Improve download algo
When viewing your bookmarked videos some will have the option for downloading. If downloading is available you will see a download link below the video. I have made some major improves to this feature.

Improve logic for detecting the flash video URL
You can download high quality flash and MP4 videos (YouTube only) when available.

Show all tags
When viewing your video collection you were only allow to view up to 50 tags. This resriction has been remove and you can view all tags by click on the 'show all tags' link located above your tags, enjoy!

Comments and rating (RIP)
I disabled this feature because it was rarely used.

Tuesday, May 20, 2008

API Update: Video Download Link!

I have added the video download link to the myVidster API.

Quick note, load time for API output may take a few seconds (during testing the max I have seen is 8 - 10 seconds). The API needs to retrieved the content for the source page and parse the data. So hitting the refresh button over and over will not speed up the up the api.

Tuesday, May 13, 2008

myVidster API - It's about time!

Update (19-Jan-2010): I have taken down the API. I am going to rewrite it. It should be back up within a few weeks.

I have received a handful of inquires on weather or not the myVidster 'script' was for sell. Selling the script (php) and providing the database structure (mysql) would limit the features that myVidster currently provides. One of those features are thumbnails creation. This feature requires root access to the web server for setting up a web thumbnail solution and the use of cron jobs to process the requests. That is why I decided to create an API that will give webmasters the ability retrieve video information from a web page (title, description and embed code) and also provide a thumbnail. All a webmaster would need to do is write up a script to store the information provided by the API and display with a pretty user interface (which myVidster is currently lacking).

Instructions:
API (XML)
http://www.myvidster.com/api_rest/

Parameters
video_link: this should be an encoded url
api_id: test (contact me to get your own id)
video_size: optional - sets the height of the embedded video

Example
http://www.myvidster.com/api_rest/?video_link= http%3A%2F%2Findysalsa.blogspot.com%2F2008%2F03%2F worklife-balance.html&api_id=test&video_size=390

Results will be in XML format (additional formats on request)

Please contact me to get an api id, the test account has limits to the number of requests.

This API is a beta so if you run into any problems or have suggestions, please post them in the comments. Thanks

Sunday, March 9, 2008

New Features - thumbnail refesh, new gallery urls and more

I have made a few updates to myvidster. Nothing ground breaking, but these enhancements will help improve the overall experience of using myvidster.

Invite link added to top menu bar.
While the invite function has been available for awhile only a few users have used it. Adding a link on the menu bar will encourage its used. For more clarity of the invite function, it is a way for you to invite your friends to checkout and join myvidster just like inviting friends to join myspace or facebook.

Thumbnail refresh
This was an update that I personally wanted for awhile, but did not have the time to code it till now. This feature will only work for videos where the thumbnail is a screen shot of the video itself (and not a thumbnail image acquire from the source site). This all may sound Greek, but I will provide an example. Let’s say you bookmark a video that is not from youtube and myvidster could not find a thumbnail on the source page. A few minutes after you have bookmarked the video you will be given 3 thumbnails which are screen shots of the video player. There will be times when the generate thumbnails are just a blank images this is due to the video not loading during the screen shot process. When editing your video bookmark you will be given the option to refresh your thumbnails. This will send a request to myvidster to retake the screen shot with the hope that the video would successfully load.

More visibility of video permission (Public / Private / Adult)
A few of my beta testers felt that this ‘feature’ was not needed, but I will defend it as follow. I have ran into issues where I wanted to share videos with my friends (using the share video link under the video), but they were not able to view the video. The reason was because I set the video permission to private. Displaying the permission next to the video (I also color coded it) will serve as a friendly reminder of what permissions you set for your videos.

Gallery url update
You have the option to select a gallery url (ie. myvidster.com/mysite) if you opt out on selecting a url, the gallery id would be used (ie. myvidster.com/123). I notice a potential problem with this method if a user creates a gallery url with a number. If you are a coder you know this will conflict with other galleries. To solve this conflict a new gallery url format will be used.
No gallery url selected: www.myvidster.com/gallery/123
Gallery url selected: www.myvidster.com/mysite

For those who have not selected a gallery url you will need update any web bookmarks you may have created. Sorry for any inconvenience this may have created.

Wednesday, February 6, 2008

More udpates (layout and bookmarklet)

I have updated the video bookmarklet so that users can select from multiple videos on one page. I personally love this feature, because websites especially blogs will have multiple videos on a page.

I also cleaned up the layout for the gallery. I know it is really boring, but I really like layouts with minimum graphics. Sites like simpy.com reply mostly on css to get the job done. Restricting the used of graphics keeps the page size small, less work for my server and faster page loading.

If you are using one channel to organize your videos (Favorites for example), your gallery's homepage will now display all the videos in the channel, instead of listing the channel itself. When a user creates an additional channel, the gallery homepage will revert back to displaying all the channels.

On my todo list is the add logic to resize the thumbnails to a standard size (140 x 110). Currently I save the thumbnails as is because I was not sure on what size I was going to stick with.