Sharing Video with Family and Friends

Youtube has become the most well-known platform to share your videos for the last few years.

However, sometimes you may have any private video that you would only like to share with our loved ones. Youtube enables you to do that, but each of your contacts need to have Youtube user ID and accept your invitation in order to be able to view your video. You can set that only friends are able to comment your video, but the video is not private and available for public viewing.

Google videos used to provide a service that enables you to upload your video to Google videos and share it only to few designated people by sending a link to their email, just like Picasa 3, the Google photo sharing platform. Unless your recipients forward it to other people, the video will only be available to them.



Yet, this service is no longer available. Google videos is currently only a Video Search Machine, where you could only search and videos taken from Youtube and other websites, but you can’t upload and share your own video anymore using Google uploader.

Currently, one of good tools to share a private video is using Gabble. Developed by HP, Gabble is an easy tool to upload your video and send its link to your designated contacts by email. Your recipients will only need to click the link and they can view your video without having to be the Gabble members. Nevertheless, if you become a Gabbler, you can participate or make your own private community to discuss the video with your network. Gabble is also a collaborative tool for business and education.

Ad-free Web 2.0 services for education, do we need that?

Wetpaint is an interesting platform to start your own online community website. It provides a set of great features, such as: wiki, video, photo, discussion board, membership, etc. coming in a package, where we can easily customize for our own purposes.

Webpaint is not only good for entertainment purposes, but also for education purposes. Teachers can easily manage their courses on their Webpaint websites. Using Webpaint is like using a simple web 2.0 Moodle or Blackboard platform.

Yet, one of the current major concerns of using Webpaint for education is their policy on Google advertisements. Their services are still “free”, but as users, you have to bear with uncontrolled Google ads on your free websites. Although I personally have not experienced any ”inappropriate” ads on my websites, I often come across some “irrelevant” ads on others and mine. In addition, having commercial ads on the education websites can sometimes be annoying.

Before August 2009, they offered completely free advertisement services, but apparently they also need to make money at some point to survive. Off course, if you don’t want the Google ads, you can have them removed from your websites for US$20/month. US$20/month for removing ads on a website can be insignificant for some people, but at the same time it can be a burden for those who pay less for their monthly Internet service.