Watch Out Hyperlink, Here Comes Hypervideo

Original from RedHerring article:

The digital world is moving to video, and anyone who can enrich the experience is bound to make a buck. One startup with its eyes on the prize is San Jose, California-based Asterpix, which on Monday launched the latest version of its web-based tool that promises to do to video what hyperlinks did to text.

Asterpix’s technology lets creators place links, or “hot spots,” in their videos on any object, such as a dog or the jersey of an athlete. Viewers click on these links to get more information directly on the screen or to connect to other videos or sites.

A video showing a sports car speeding down the highway might have a hotspot on the car’s tires, for example, which once clicked could give brand and pricing details and a close-up picture.

Here’s an example of a hot-spotted surfer riding a 64-foot wave in Maui.

Much like text-based hyperlinks, hot spots also let users bounce from point to point throughout the web as if—in the words of Asterpix CEO Nat Kausik—you’re “video surfing.”

The larger goal, said Mr. Kausik, is to help bloggers and web publishers build more customized, interactive videos. And if hypervideo technology—from Asterpix or elsewhere—were to become pervasive, one could imagine a world of layer upon layer of interconnected video.

But for the time being, Asterpix is still fine-tuning its service. It already has a free consumer version online, and with Monday’s launch of the “Pro” version, the company has its first moneymaking offering. For the latter, video owners—who host their own content—will pay Asterpix a few cents whenever a customer views videos or clicks on certain hotspots.

While there are hypervideo desktop products on the market, such as one by VideoClix that starts at $249, Asterpix is betting that its simple interface and web-based approach will attract users.

But there is big money to be made for anyone who can help make money from online video, said Gartner analyst Van Baker, and that means more direct competitors shouldn’t be far behind.

Overlay.tv is one of them. The Ottawa, Canada-based startup, which completed a $4.6 million first round of venture funding this January, launches next month.

Founded in 2006, Asterpix is backed by New Enterprise Associates.

If you haven’t seen my earlier post about Asterpix Pro, you could click here.

Tip for Making a Powerful Online Video About Your Product – Asterpix Pro

So you have a great product and decided to advertise it in an online video, too? This post Top Ten Tips for Making a Powerful Online Video About Your Product describes 10 tips to make a online video about your product. Here’s the first tip:

1, Put yourself in an online mindset

Forget the TV lore and treat your video as an experiment (yes, as a constant beta): you can have multiple versions with slight or major differences, you can put up your video on loads of video sharing sites, you can make instant changes – so, yes this is a test and will always be a test version that can get better and better. Don’t forget that your video can be downloaded (even if you didn’t plan with it), can be commented (expect a mixture of nice and nasty comments – there is no single video on the web that has no nasty comments!) and can be remade – giving it totally different interpretation and emphasis. Can you accept it? Great, let’s go on. Make your videos interactive by themselves – have hypervideo links.

And over the weekend Asterpix has announced Asterpix Pro, which fits perfectly for this purpose. With their existing object tracking capability, Asterpix has already become a popular site for end-users to create hypervideo links on any popular video sites like youtube, dailymotion, myspace, etc. Now the Asterpix Pro allows content owners/advertisers to create hypervideo links on hotspots. Here are couple screenshots from their demo:

As you could see, users could highlight and click on the hotspots, and will drive the side panel to display detail information or related buying info. Do I need a consultant companies or team to get this working? No. Asterpix’s easy to use (point-and-shoot) interface and their Asterpix API make the life much simpler.

There are couple blogs talking about Asterpix Pro too.
Asterpix Pro Offers Hyperlinked Video with Stats
Nat’s Blog talking about Asterpix Pro

Asterpix Interactive Video – Assembly of Ford 3d Duratec HE Engine

This is an excellent demonstration about the new web based free service called asterpix. It allows you to annotate or create links inside a video footage, which is still hosted in the video sharing sites like YouTube, DailyMotion, etc. Somehow asterpix could track the object on-the-fly, create the hotspots or area for you to click on, and display the information about the object. I think this tool will be very useful for classroom teaching or for education purpose.

from asterpix.com posted with vodpod

Asterpix Interactive Video – Ronaldinho Video: Touch of Gold

Great video and unbelievable skills from Ronaldinho. Notice that the asterpix embed player has very cool functionality. Click on the hotspots of Ronaldinho and the player will load another video or hotspot without reloading the page and the player.

from asterpix.com posted with vodpod

Asterpix Interactive Video – Struck in tsunami

My first interactive video to share. I am always amazed how Brad Gerlach could handle this surfing at Jaws in Maui. With asterpix, now this video is embedded with “hotspots” and more information will be displayed when you move over it.

from asterpix.com posted with vodpod