I used to edit my videos on Adobe’s video editing software called Premiere. But now I find it a bit tedious to be bound to one laptop and to edit all my clips on a specific machine. So I started to look after an online video editing service that offers me a possibility to upload, cut, edit and share my videos.

The first that I tested was Yahoo’s Jumpcut.

Jumpcut

I loved the easiness of uploading the files. It’s graphically appealing and each clip in uploaded separately so you can see the progress of each clip.

Editing is also quite easy to learn. Basically you can add video clips, pictures, effects, transitions and captions to your movie. I was a bit disappointed because there are only predefined captions (you can’t change the font, size, movement of the text and background) so the caption, subtitle or the title might look awkward.

There are also several possibilities to share the video with your friends or just post it online.

JayCut

JayCut on the other hand seems to have more complicated interface, although I was excited at first as there are two timelines for video - Video A and Video B. Uploading of videos took a little longer because you can edit the filenames and add title or description. But when uploading starts the progress bar shows the overall progress of all clips.

Again I was searching for nice captions and I soon learned that it had even less possibilities as Jumpcut - actually there is only one available!

Actually both video editing offer similar features. I have just started using them but I think I will use Jumpcut more often as it has more intuitive and usable uploading and editing possibilities and above all the quality of the final movie is in my opinion slightly better (I was able to compare it as I have uploaded and edited the same video clips on both services).

So here is the finalist:

Do you remember this viral video?

The famous retoucher (of the celebrities) Pascal Dangin has revealed in his interview for The New Yorker that Dove’s pictures of real beauty are not so real after all. They have been retouched!

Here is a small part of the interview:

” I mentioned the Dove ad campaign that proudly featured lumpier-than-usual “real women” in their undergarments. It turned out that it was a Dangin job. “Do you know how much retouching was on that?” he asked. “But it was great to do, a challenge, to keep everyone’s skin and faces showing the mileage but not looking unattractive.” Source

Well didn’t you know that? Everything you see in ads is…an illusion.

Even I can admit that every photo of me that I put online is retouched. At least a bit. ;)

Anybody knows him?

Today was a perfect day to go on the bike. 3 hour trip from Ljubljana to Janče and back.

Great views and who would have thought that such divine place is so close.

See the pictures in the gallery:

ToboAds is a Slovenian contextual based ad network (similar as Google AdWords and AdSense). It enables various ad formats that contain text and text with image.

Here is an example:

It has an interesting concept of charging for displayed and clicked ads. In general advertisers pay 0.2€ CPC (Cost per Click) and 0.0002€ for confirmed ad and publishers get half of it, therefore, 0.1€ CPC and 0.0001€ for every ad that has been viewed for at least 2 seconds. But here comes the question how to know the sistem is working on your site? Maybe your number of displayed and seen ads is low and you want to check how and when your ads get confirmed by ToboAds sistem.

First of all you have to know that (besides clicked ads) the confirmed ads also get you money (0.0001€) so try to optimize the position of the ad spaces on your web side.

Here is an example from princessdesign.net:

I have marked the browser content area (which can be seen without scrolling) in yellow. These ads get a chance to become confirmed if the visitor sees them for at least 2 seconds. If they get confirmed, you get 0.0001€.

On the other hand the ads positioned lower on the web page are regarded as displayed ads. The visitor cannot see them yet and they cannot get confirmed unless the visitor scrolls down.

How to see if the confirmation sistem works?

1. First download the Firefox add-on FireBug.
2. Install it and restart Firefox
3. Then open FireBug (Tools - Firebug-Open Firebug) and go to a web site with ToboAds, for example http://www.princessdesign.net
4. In Console tab the request is displayed after 2 seconds any you can clearly see when your ads get confirmed.

Here you can see that in this particular case the time was not 2 seconds but rather 240ms. While testing I have also seen cases when the number was between 150ms and 250ms.

What is your experience?

Slimbox is a light version (with some enhancements like navigation) of Lightbox JS. Lightbox can be described as a simple, unobtrusive script used to overlay images on the current page. You might seen both of them on numerous web sites.

Example of Lightbox:

Example of Slimbox:

But how to localize Slimbox into, for example, Slovenian language?

There are few things to do:

1. Localize the images (Next, Prev, Close)

2. Localize the text Image … of …

3. Change the keyboard keys which control Next, Prev and Close

1. Localize the images (Next, Prev, Close)

Under the folder /images you have four gif files: closelabel.gif, loading.gif, nextlabel.gif and prevlabel.gif. Just open the files (in bold) in yout image editor and delete existing text with localized version. Be also careful about the letter that will used for navigation - in original Slimbox c is used to close the overlay, n for next, p for previous (some other keys are also available) - and underline the appropriate letter.

Original Slimbox labels:

Localized Slimbox labels (in Slovenian language):

You can also download these three files as zip file.

2. Localize the text Image … of …

As you can see under the picture there is an indication of the number of pictures in the gallery and the number of the picture you are viewing.

For example: Image 1 of 5

You can change this in the file slimbox.js, line 144. Just replace words Image and of into appropriate words.

3. Change the keyboard keys which control Next, Prev and Close

In original Slimbox you can navigate between images with the following keyboard keys:

Next: n and right arrow
Previous: p and left arrow
Close: Esc, x and c

These can also be changed in slimbox.js, lines 106-108.

You must use JavaScript Character codes to represent different letters on the keyboard.

Therefore the keys are coded as:

Next: n (case 78) and right arrow (case 39)
Previous: p (case 80) and left arrow (case 37)
Close: Esc (case 27), x (case 88) and c (case 67)

And when you want to localize it, just map the right keys.

Example of Slovenian localization:

Next - Naprej: n (case 78) and right arrow (case 39)
Previous - Nazaj: j (case 74) and left arrow (case 37)
Close - Zapri: Esc (case 27) and z (case 90)

Example of the localized code (slimbox.js, lines 106-108):

case 27: case 90: this.close(); break;
case 37: case 74: this.previous(); break;
case 39: case 78: this.next();

Have fun using Slimbox!

Wanna swim?