Jason Dunn
03-10-2004, 12:00 AM
<div class='os_post_top_link'><a href='http://www.prnewswire.com/cgi-bin/stories.pl?ACCT=SVBIZINK2.story&STORY=/www/story/03-09-2004/0002124535&EDATE=TUE+Mar+09+2004,+05:07+AM' target='_blank'>http://www.prnewswire.com/cgi-bin/stories.pl?ACCT=SVBIZINK2.story&STORY=/www/story/03-09-2004/0002124535&EDATE=TUE+Mar+09+2004,+05:07+AM</a><br /><br /></div>"When it comes to finding a date, a home or a job, millions of people turn to the Internet. Online career advertising alone is expected to hit $4 billion in 2005. But at the same time business is booming, trying to get noticed becomes more difficult. Now Video POP, a Greenwich, CT.-based marketing and technology company, has added a new online do-it-yourself video option to help these markets with a self-publishing video service. Video POP enables online dating, real estate, auction and recruiting Web sites the ability to provide its non-technical customers with a simple and inexpensive way to record and upload video files right from their own PCs regardless of their Internet connection. The process is compatible with any web cam, digital video camera or local computer file."<br /><br />Not to be confused with POP Up Video, Video POP has a patent-pending system (don't they all) that allows people to...capture and upload video. The press release is utterly vague on how this process will work, but considering they have a quote from Macromedia, my hunch is that they'll have some sort of ActiveX control that bridges into the WDM capture built into Windows, and it will transcode the video to Flash and stream it up to a server where it will be stored. I've seen Flash used for video more and more, and while I haven't done any file size comparisons to see how well it stacks up against MPEG-based solutions, the quality looks decent enough.<br /><br />Getting back to Video POP for a moment, the application in online dating is obvious, but what about job resumes, or selling on eBay? If a video of you is the first thing a potential employer sees, will they focus more on that than on your resume? And what if you have a nice voice or a charming accent - will that get you more money on ebay?