Video and the healthcare industry

icyou.com looks to be the Web’s only destination focused solely on healthcare videos (it has been called the YouTube of the health industry). It contains everything from news about important medical breakthroughs to the latest diets, from recipes for diabetics to vlogs from cancer patients. No doubt there will be many more vertical market video sites cropping up during 2008.

On the subject of health – this article describes how one doctor in the US using video e-mails to delivery the results of medical tests to patients. Maybe a tad impersonal but it is a way of reducing the costs of treatment. Dick Stroud

Adobe’s dominates the streaming video application

According to this report in The Motley Fool, 76% of all Web video today is streamed through its Flash application, despite the best efforts of Microsoft and its Silverlight product.

A mobile Flash version with full video support just saw the light of day, and wireless giants Nokia and NTT DoCoMo have already considered developing handsets and services around it.

Good way to start the New Year. Dick Stroud

Dating - an obvious application for video

There is an annoying habit of sticking 2.0 behind a service to indicate that is the latest version or in someway totally different to its predecessor. So welcome to Dating 2.0. a pile of new services looking to ride on the booming popularity of web video.

The new video-centered services like SpeedDate, Say-hey-hey and WooMe all are US based. No doubt the trend will soon hit Europe. An article in Wired.com (still version 1.0 I think) has lots more about this subject. Dick Stroud

ING Direct - good use of video

It is great to see a large financial services company start using guerrilla video. ING Direct, one of the world’s largest online banks, uses this video that is prominently shown on the home page to provide customer testimonials. OK, you can argue about the style, but I reckon it is pretty good. Dick Stroud.

Livefaceonweb.com

This is an interesting idea.

$260 buys you a short video to imbed in your site to welcome visitors. Rather than trying to explain it all go and look at the company’s site and a sample of the service in action on eBay.

Video Spokespeople is another site offering similar services - expect to see more companies like these in 2008. Dick Stroud

New Google Toolbar video

This illustrates a beautiful combination of informality, clarity and fun. Your task is to explain the new Google Toolbar in 63 seconds. Bet you couldn’t improve on this! Dick Stroud

Santa’s little helper

Before we leave the Xmas period I thought I must blog this cute and effective video from Net-a-Porter. Really nicely produced. Dick Stroud

Good news from Firefox

One step closer to making it easier to play web video. The announcement that Firefox and Opera will support a new HTML tag that is used specifically for embedding video in Web pages is good news.

Add this announcement, to that from Intel, about its new Penryn processor (designed to enable HD Web video) plus the latest HD version of Flash Player and it can be seen that there is no doubt that the infrastructure technology is aligning to support the growth of the Web video. Dick Stroud

World Travel Market Presentation

A couple of weeks ago I presented about Web video at the World Travel Market - staged in London.

It was great to see such an interest in the subject – well over a hundred attendees.

You can download the presentation in video or PDF format. Dick Stroud