Free IQ Player Updated!

Here’s a post from the Free IQ Team!

We’ve been busy at Free IQ and just released our new video player!

Check it out by watching Brad Fallon on the vision of Free IQ.
Or see circlecube at Free IQ!

[kml_flashembed movie=”http://freeiq.com/ipprime.swf” height=”338″ width=”450″ fvars=” playlistURL = http://www.freeiq.com/vidxml.dhtml?lx=bradfallononthevisionoffreeiq ; autoplay = false ; embed = 1 ” allowfullscreen=”true” fversion=”9″ useexpressinstall=”true” allowscriptaccess=”always” /]

At the surface, the player looks much the same, but as you dig into the secondary functions, you’ll see a slew of enhancements made with you and all freeiq-ers in mind.

The layout has been updated to be more dynamic, more readable and web 2.0 friendly. The graphics got a make-over.

The updates to the playlist have cleaned up the interface and give helpful information about the content. We still get the ReviewRank for each item, and also we can see our personal viewing history, a feature we’re calling the ‘high water mark’. You can see how far into a video you’ve been. This high water mark is also shown in the scrub bar, for returning to where you left off quickly, just click the yellow arrow to return. Also the video currently being played in the player is specified as ‘Now Watching’ (how original).

Playlist

The author window still displays the author’s portrait, biography and links to the author page. The author biography may contain html- such as links, which help viewers learn more about authors.

Author

The IQPON window connects viewers to providers by giving users access to the content provider’s services!

IQPON

Sharing options have been improved greatly!

Users may embed content on their own site directly from the player now! By choosing options for auto play and format user’s copy embed codes straight from the player, and paste it into their own site. The normal format uses javascript to ensure maximum compatibility with different browsing software, and the the extra simple format is for embedding content into sites which restrict javascript, such as MySpace and a handful of others, so there is always a way to embed content into your very own space.

Embed

Sharing by email is much faster now, as you can send to multiple people at once directly through the player itself (just separate the email addresses with a comma).

Email

Sharing with the web is just as easy! You can copy the link or click your preferred social bookmarking site. Social bookmarking capabilities are built into the player, so with one click you can bookmark content to any of a number of social bookmarking sites (del.icio.us, digg, furl, google bookmarks, magnolia, reddit, stumble upon, technorati, windows live favorites and yahoo! bookmarks) with more to come.

Social Bookmarking

All these methods are used to share content and are useful no matter where the player is embedded!

This player release features updates to the Full Screen mode as well. To take full advantage of the screen size we stretched the control across the bottom of the screen! The control tray will slide away after a few seconds giving access to full screen video playback. To bring the controls back, just more the mouse again.

Volume controls are updated for faster more intuitive interactive control.

By using the internal menu (just right-click to access it) you have access to all options in the player.

Menu

Also updated with this release is the integration with Google Analytics! There is new tracking built into the player and best news of all is that the player now supports both versions of the Google Analytics Tracking Code. So whether you’ve updated to the new tracking system or still use the Legacy code, this player logs interactions with the player to your google analytics reports! It will tell you how much people are watching your videos, which ones and how users interact with the player on your site. We’ll post about that later, once you’ve gotten used to your new player!

Another point to mention… if you’re a Free IQ regular and have already embedded content onto your site, the updates are automatic. You have nothing to do to enable these updates! It’s already done!

Enjoy the updates, we put a lot into it!

Let us know any suggestions you have for making the Free IQ video player even better – for you!

The Free Line | Logo Design

Brad Fallon had me make a Logo for his new site, The Free Line Report.
free line logo

About the Free Line:

The Free Line is based on the concept of “Moving the Free Line� — the idea that you can grow your business, faster and more effectively, by giving away more.

Today is the age of short attention spans where interruption ads bombard us every waking minute. If you want to get more new customers, you’re better off figuring out how to give more — a lot more — first.

About the Free Line Report:

The Free Line Report is a short video podcast about internet marketing, online video, Web 2.0, and e-business.

With less than two minutes per day, you can keep up with the latest news you can use.

About.StomperNet.com

About dot Stompernet dot Com (about.stompernet.com) is the new public (free) website from StomperNet. I helped implement this design and had to learn all about themes in Drupal. It’s still in beta, but it’s well on it’s way. It is an agglomeration site, where all the StomperNet Faculty’s feeds can be found and various other free content, like video in the Squambido player, and the Scrutinizer software.

about stompernet screenshot

Squambido from StomperNet

The new video player from StomperNet!

Feature Set: This Video Player is built in Adobe flash. I was involved in the actionscripting and design of the player and implementing many of the functions. There is a playlist imported into the player and even an html ‘sales pages’ loaded into the player. The progress bar shows download progress, watched progress and even history. It shows you how far you’ve ever watched in each specific video in the playlist, the “high-water mark”, and it lets you jump back to that spot easily by clicking in the progress bar. A feature I’m proud of is the mute, it doesn’t just cut the audio, but has a fade to silent quality- which even remembers your preferred volume if you come back to the page later. The player incorporates google analytics. Full Screen mode allows use of the entire monitor. Another ‘tab’ is used to show info about the author.

There is a lot packed into this one player, and we have plans to pack in even more!

Stompernet is using this player to promote their new line of content: Going Natural 2

[kml_flashembed movie=”http://www.stompernet.net/squambido/pagetest/squambido.swf” height=”338″ width=”450″ fvars=” playlistURL = http://www.stompernet.net/GoingNatural20/files/GoingNatural20Public.dhtml.xml ; autoplay = false ; awiz = 1126 ” allowfullscreen=”true” fversion=”9″ useexpressinstall=”true” allowscriptaccess=”always” /]

StomperNet Scrutinizer

StomperNet releases Scrutinizer, software for viewing websites through a simulated fovea vision. Since not everyone could set-up, let alone afford a real eye-tracker. This software uses the mouse pointer as the user’s focal point, or foveal view. It blurs everything except where your focal point (the mouse) is. It is helpful because it forces you to re-think web design from an extreme usability standpoint. This browser software was built in conjunction with Nitobi using Adobe AIR and Flex. I had the chance to do the skinning of the browser in flex! I really hope to have a good excuse to play more with flex.

Scrutinizer Thumbnail

Anyways, check out the free software (master-minded by Andy Edmonds), this ‘Click Fu’ video created to explain it, and the many uses of Scrutinizer.

[kml_flashembed movie=”http://www.stompernet.net/squambido/pagetest/squambido.swf” height=”338″ width=”450″ fvars=” playlistURL = http://www.stompernet.net/GoingNatural20/files/GoingNatural20Public.dhtml.xml ; autoplay = false ; awiz = 1126 ; playlistoffset = 4″ allowfullscreen=”true” fversion=”9″ useexpressinstall=”true” allowscriptaccess=”always” /]

More Circle Cube on Free IQ

Here’s that music video for the Wrens- Faster Gun, on Free IQ

[kml_flashembed movie=”http://freeiq.com/ipprime.swf” height=”338″ width=”450″ fvars=” playlistURL = http://www.freeiq.com/vidxml.dhtml?lx=fastergun ; autoplay = false ; embed = 1 ” allowfullscreen=”true” fversion=”9″ useexpressinstall=”true” allowscriptaccess=”always” /]

www.WinnersWall.com

A website (sales letter site) to order an engraved tile to be placed on a wall at you choice of NASCAR race tracks. Proceeds benefit Speedway Childrens’ Charities. Get yours today…

Site design with Dreamweaver using html and css. Incorporated flash elements for multiple video and audio players. Graphic Design in Fireworks and Illustrator.

winnerswall thumb

Click to visit!

Free IQ Player updated!

The video player at Free IQ now supports Google Analytics and remembers your history!

We’ve just released a few new features for the flash player. For the user, we’ve added a “high water” mark showing furthest point in the video you’ve watched. For the web-site owner who embeds a FreeIQ video player on their sites, we’re now integrated with Google Analytics to help you understand how users are engaging with your video. Read on…

For the User

Say you start a video one Saturday afternoon and don’t get to watch all of it, or you’re watching a video and you rewind because you missed a bit of content. The high water mark helps you know where in the video you left off.

The image below shows a player where the user has watched up to about 3 minutes, but rewound to minute 1. The green vertical bar in the timeline helps the viewer return to finish watching the video.
freeiq_video_player_watermark.png

For the Hoster

If you embed a FreeIQ video player and use the free Google Analtyics solution, we’ll log entries to your analytics telling you how many folks start watching the video, completed watching the video, click through to your author page, etc.

Here’s the full table of events you’ll see in your analytics stream:

Log EntryUser Action
/freeiqvideo/playstart/(video name) start the video
/freeiqvideo/playcomplete/(video name) finish the video
/freeiqvideo/authorinfo/(authorHomepage)view author tab
/freeiqvideo/outgoing/freeiqauthorpage/(authorHomepage)click through to author homepage
/freeiqvideo/outgoing/freeiqiqpon/(authorHomepage)/(iqponPage) click through to iqpon
/freeiqvideo/email/(video name)send a share email
/freeiqvideo/embed/(video name) get embed codes

You can opt out of this by sending the parameter “useGoogleAnalytics” as false in the embed code, and of course, if you don’t use Google Analytics, nothing undesirable will happen. If you use Google Analytics on your site, this will automatically appear in your reports. If you don’t, you may want to consider adding Google Analytics to your site, at which point, these will begin appearing in your reports.

So, to our users, happy viewing. To our web-site owners, dedicated stats on viewership of video on your site is yet another reason to use FreeIQ.

Read the full article at: the FreeIQTeam blog

Circle Cube on Free IQ

Embedded player from Free IQ.
Nicholsong song by Dionysos, Music Video by Circle Cube Studio
[kml_flashembed movie=”http://freeiq.com/ipprime.swf” height=”338″ width=”450″ fvars=” playlistURL = http://www.freeiq.com/vidxml.dhtml?lx=nicholsong ; autoplay = false ; embed = 1 ” allowfullscreen=”true” fversion=”9″ useexpressinstall=”true” allowscriptaccess=”always” /]

Free IQ Player Released!

Introducing our new Free IQ player! It’s got lots of new bells and whistles, and is the first player on the internet to directly incorporate e-commerce.



Let us take you through the tour of:

  1. Our new “scrub bar”
  2. Volume controls
  3. The playlist
  4. Full screen mode
  5. Author information
  6. IQpons


The term “scrub bar” refers to widgetry for moving back and forth in the video. Pictured in the middle of the bottom control bar, it shows you the elapsed time out of the total and the amount of the video loaded. Skip forward or back within the loaded area by simply clicking on the bar or even “scrub” through the video by dragging the handle.




Click the volume icon for interactive volume settings and a mute button inside the video panel.




Full screen is one of our most exciting features! Get ready for Free IQ immersion!

The text in the middle of the screen tells you that you can press ESC to exit full screen. The player control at the bottom disappears after a few seconds and re-appears when click on the screen.




Select among related content with the playlist. Note the presence of our estimation of the quality of the content through your input, ReviewRank.




Click the graphic of a person to access the author panel and learn more about this content’s author and jump to his homepage at Free IQ.




With the IQPon, you can hire a Free IQ author for direct consultation! Anyone can create an IQpon product at Free IQ, so put your expertise to work today.




For authors who are not offering consulting services, this button is replaced with Share — the broadcast icon on the far right of the control bar.



From Share, you can get code to put the video on your page, or mail to a friend. This is available in the tabbed widget from Author Info or Playlist as well.

Thanks to Andy Beard for the his writeup of Free IQ today. His core complaint about our player, an inability to get to the product page, is now resolved. You can reach the authors homepage from within the Author Info tab, or the homepage of the currently playing video from the FreeIQ logo on the control bar.

What This Means To You

These improvements have advantages for you, no matter how you use FreeIQ:

As a user – you get an improved user experience, with more viewing options and the ability to easily find out more information on the author or the subject.

As an affiliate – you get more sales, because viewers are more likely to click through to content, the author’s site, or FreeIQ in general. Plus, with ecommerce enabled in the player itself, you’re more likely to get a sale!

As a content provider – users are more likely to watch your video all the way through and to click to your site. Plus, full screen mode makes it so that screen-capture-type videos are more readable, so the learning experience you provide is enhanced.

We think you’ll find this new viewer to be a very cool step forward. We’d like to hear your reactions too by adding a comment below! Try it out with one of the links below:

Stay tuned!

Visit the Free IQ Team blog to read more at freeiqteam.com!