VideoSurf Brings Video Search to Twitter Jun 18, 20098:00 PDT

Videosurf.com is now powering video searches from within Twitter!

Anyone on Twitter (whether they follow @videosurf or not) can now search through VideoSurf’s rapidly growing index of over 50 billion visual moments from great sites like YouTube, CNN, ESPN, Hulu, MTV, MSN, Comedy Central, and more without ever leaving their Twitter stream. By combining the Twitter API and the bit.ly API with our own VideoSurf API, VideoSurf has created a mashup that gives you one more reason to watch video all day long.

Performing a VideoSurf search on Twitter is easy:

1. In the Twitter post field, simply type @videosurf

2. then type “s” (as in search)

3. then a description of the video you want to search for

VideoSurf’s New Release Jun 10, 20097:59 PDT

VideoSurf’s latest release is out and we’ve got some exciting new developments to share with you.  In addition to the updated look and feel, we made some big improvements to key areas including search relevancy (spam detection, video deduplication), people spotlighting, and our homepage.  This new release is all about helping you find what you’re looking for, faster.  Whether that’s a search result, a celebrity, or a cool video to watch, we’re working harder to make sure you spend less time searching and more time being entertained.

Quickly search for videos in Firefox with VideoSurf & Ubiquity Apr 1, 200912:57 PDT

Most of you probably haven’t heard about Ubiquity yet, but it’s a new project from Mozilla Labs that looks to make Mozilla Firefox much more useful.  Still in a testing stage, Ubiquity is already a great tool and we took it upon ourselves to make it even better. In their own words:

You’re used to telling Firefox where you want to go by typing Web addresses into the URL bar. With Ubiquity installed, you’ll be able to tell Firefox what you want it to do by typing commands into a new Ubiquity input box.

Our new command is built into Ubiquity and will run a VideoSurf search, showing you videos from all over the Web instantly. Our unique visual summary makes it easy for you to see at-a-glance which videos you want to watch. We’ll also let you jump to a particular moment in that video, and show you which people appear frequently in your search results and let you find more videos about those people.

Here are a couple of screenshots of it in action. Once installed, all you have to do is bring up the Ubiquity command window and type “videos [any query]“.

Installing Ubiquity is as easy as installing any other Firefox extension. You can find it here:
https://wiki.mozilla.org/Labs/Ubiquity. (Direct link to xpi file)

Once you’ve done that, you can summon Ubiquity by tapping option-space on the Mac, or control-space if you’re on Windows. On Linux, try alt-space. Then type “videos [your query]“.

That’s it. Try it out!

We’d really love to hear feedback and ideas, so please email us at feedback@videosurf.com. Thanks!

Seven People Lil Wayne Should Ask to Prom Feb 8, 20097:57 PST

by Kelly Hargrave

Lil Wayne hip hopped his way to the Grammy’s last weekend, most likely sporting his usual dreads, tattoos, and a red solo cup that probably magically fills itself back up when there is only a drop left. Yeah we should be praising him for conquering the world of music in 2008, but maybe he should have waited until after the Grammy’s to leak his debut rock song, “Prom Queen”. Basically, he sounds like a horny robot who’s been hit over the head by a guitar, and sadly words in slow motion from Lil Wayne just aren’t as sexy. If Lil Wayne could do this song all over again, how could he make it better and worthy of what he has already accomplished? Maybe he’d need a mentor–a Mr. Miyagi if you will–to teach him the “wax on” and “wax off” of proms and queens. So to benefit his rock stardom, here are seven people Lil Wayne should ask to prom.

Weezy and his prom date prepare to “wax off”.

Troy Bolton from High School Musical 3

It’s hard enough for Lil Wayne, let alone anyone, to come out with a song about prom after this blockbuster hit. But Zac Efron knows how to work an angle with the ladies. Let’s not go too far and say that Lil Wayne has to turn his song into a Broadway number, but a little more emotion from Weezy Baby could help, unless he truly is trying to appeal to robots, or people who recognize just as much
emotion as Joan Rivers’ face.

Firefox Extension - VideoSurf Videos at Glance Feb 5, 200912:23 PST

We’re really excited to announce the release of VideoSurf’s new FireFox extension, Videos at a Glance.

Visit the extension’s page in the Firefox add-on directory to install it and read on to learn more…

Videos at a Glance let’s you take VideoSurf’s unique Visual Summary experience along with you when you’re on other sites like Google and YouTube. VideoSurf’s Visual Summaries display selected thumbnails from the most important scenes in each video to allow you to easily find the video you want, avoid spam and jump to specific moments in a video. With this add-on, VideoSurf’s Visual Summaries will now display on video search results and on video viewing pages so you can see what each video is about before you watch it and jump in time to the moments you most want to see.

This is the next evolution of a Greasemonkey script that we released a little while ago to rave reviews from CNET, Lifehacker, ReadWriteWeb and others.

The new extension does everything the Greasemonkey script did plus a whole lot more. It now supports:

- Google Search
- Youtube Video Page (new!)
- Youtube Search Page
- Yahoo! Search
- FriendFeed (new!)

Also new in the extension:

- Support for videos from many, many more video sites (and more to come soon).
- Use the visual summary to jump in time while watching a video on YouTube’s video page.
- Discover more videos featuring the characters in the videos you view on Youtube.
- Option to make all HQ-compatible YouTube videos play in high quality by default on Youtube.
- Preferences pane to let you tweak the extension’s functionality on any of the supported sites.

Note: Please uninstall the old Greasemonkey script after installing this extension to prevent summaries from appearing twice.

Install the extension by visiting the extension’s page in the Firefox add-on directory